John Curry - The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought in The Ottoman Empire The Rise of The Halveti Order, 1350-1650 PDF

The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought in the Ottoman Empire
The Transformation of
Muslim Mystical Thought
The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought
in the Ottoman Empire in the Ottoman Empire
The Rise of the Halveti Order, 1350 –1650
John J. Curry The Rise of the Halveti Order, 1350 –1650
One of the more poorly understood aspects of the history of
the Ottoman Empire has been the flourishing of Sufi mysticism
under its auspices. This study tracks the evolution of the Halveti
order from its modest origins in medieval Azerbaijan to the
emergence of its influential Şa bâniyye branch, whose range
c
extended throughout the Empire at the height of its expansion.
With careful reconstruction of the lives of formerly obscure

figures in the order’s history, a complex picture emerges of the
connections of Halveti groups with the Ottoman state and
society. Even more importantly – since the Şa bâniyye branch of
c
the order grew out of the towns and villages of the northern
Anatolian mountains rather than the major urban centres – this
work has the added benefit of bringing a unique perspective to
how Ottoman subjects lived, worked and worshipped outside
the major urban centres of the Empire. Along the way, it sheds
light on less-visible actors in society, such as women and
artisans, and challenges widely held generalisations about the
activities and strategies of Ottoman mystics.
John J. Curry is an Assistant Professor of Near Eastern and

Islamic History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
John J. Curry
ISBN 978 0 7486 3923 6
Edinburgh University Press
22 George Square
Edinburgh EH8 9LF
www.euppublishing.com
Jacket image: ‘Visit to a dervish’. Page from
Khvarazmi, Makhzan al-Asrar, dateable 1610–1615,
copied by Ali Rida-yi Abbasi, Safavid Isfahan
Edinburgh
© Topkapı Palace Museum
Jacket design: Michael Chatfield John J. Curry
THE TRANSFORMATION OF
MUSLIM MYSTICAL THOUGHT IN
THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
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This work is dedicated to:
Professor Carl Petry
for his support and introducing me to the field of
Islamic studies so many years ago
and
the late Professor Şinasi Tekin
for without his tireless endeavors to teach a generation
of new scholars the secrets of Ottoman Turkish, this
book could never have been written
rahmet olsun canına
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THE
TRANSFORMATION
OF MUSLIM
MYSTICAL
THOUGHT IN THE
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
The Rise of the Halvetİ Order,
1350–1650
John J. Curry
Edinburgh University Press
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© John J. Curry, 2010
Edinburgh University Press Ltd

22 George Square, Edinburgh
www.euppublishing.com
Typeset in JaghbUni by
Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and
printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 3923 6 (hardback)
The right of John J. Curry to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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CONTENTS
List of Maps and Figures vii

Abbreviations for Frequently Cited Works in the Text viii
Acknowledgments xiii
Note on Transliteration xvi
Map 1 xvii
Map 2 xviii
INTRODUCTION: ON THE STUDY OF OTTOMAN MYSTICAL

TRADITIONS 1
PART I. THE RISE AND SPREAD OF THE HALVETİ ORDER

FROM ITS ORIGINS THROUGH THE ELEVENTH/
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
INTRODUCTION 15
1 EARLY SUFISM AND THE ORIGINS OF THE HALVETİ PATH,
C. 900–1400 21
2 THE GREAT EXPANSION: FROM REGIONAL ORGANIZATION
TO FAR-FLUNG NETWORK, C. 1400–1600 50
PART II. THE EVOLUTION OF A HALVETİ SUB-BRANCH: THE

LIFE AND CAREER OF ŞAʿBÂN-I VELİ AND HIS
FOLLOWERS IN THE KASTAMONU REGION
INTRODUCTION 89
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vi The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought
3 ECHOES OF A DISTANT PAST: ŞAʿBÂN-I VELİ’S EARLY LIFE
AND CONVERSION TO SUFISM 93
4 GENESIS OF A SUB-BRANCH: ŞAʿBÂN-I VELİ’S STRUGGLES
IN KASTAMONU 108
5 AN UNEVEN LEGACY: THE SUCCESSION TO ŞAʿBÂN-I
VELİ TO THE END OF THE TENTH/SIXTEENTH CENTURY 156
PART III. DEFENDING THE CULT OF SAINTS IN ELEVENTH/

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY KASTAMONU:
TRANSFORMING THE ŞAʿBÂNİYE ORDER UNDER ʿÖMER
EL-FUʾÂDÎ
INTRODUCTION 197
6 ʿÖMER EL-FUʾÂDÎ AS SUFI ASPIRANT AND
HAGIOGRAPHER: THE ROAD TO ŞAʿBÂNİYE SUCCESSION 199
7 INSCRIBING THE ŞAʿBÂNİYE ORDER ONTO
KASTAMONU’S LANDSCAPE 223
8 THE POLITICAL AND DOCTRINAL LEGACY OF ʿÖMER
EL-FUʾÂDÎ 268
CONCLUSION: WHAT CAN THE ŞAʿBÂNİYE TEACH US

ABOUT TRANSITIONS IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD OF
WORLD HISTORY? 292
Appendix I 299
Appendix II 303
Works Cited and Further Reading 305
Index of Persons 321
Index of Places 326
Index of Subjects 328
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MAPS AND FIGURES
MAP 1 THE MIDDLE EAST xvii

MAP 2 TURKEY xviii
FIGURE 1 INTERIOR OF THE ŞAʿBÂN-I VELİ MOSQUE IN

KASTAMONU, TURKEY 9
FIGURE 2 THE ENTRANCE TO THE ŞAʿBÂN-I VELİ COMPLEX 90
FIGURE 3 THE TOMB OF SEYYID AHMED SÜNNETÎ EFENDİ 95
FIGURE 4 THE TOMB OF HAYREDDÎN TOKÂDÎ 102
FIGURE 5 THE COMPLEX OF BENLİ SULTAN IN THE VILLAGE
OF AHLAT NEAR MT İLGÂZ 113
FIGURE 6 THE INSCRIPTION OVER THE ŞAʿBÂN-I VELİ
MOSQUE 226
vii
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Abbreviations FOR FREQUENTLY CITED
WORKS IN THE TEXT
AG-MM Gölpınarlı, Abdülbâkî, Mevlanaʾdan Sonra Mevlevilik, 2nd edn

(İstanbul: Gül Matbaası, 1983).
AKAK Abdulkadiroğlu, Abdulkerim, Halvetilikʾin Şaʿbaniyye Kolu: Şeyh
Şaʿban-ı Veli ve Külliyesi (Ankara: Turk Hava Kurumu Basımevi,
1991).
AK-IM Knysh, Alexander, Islamic Mysticism: A Short History (Leiden: E. J.
Brill, 2000).
AYHC Ayvansarâyî Hüseyîn Efendi, et al., Hadîkatüʾl-Cevâmiʿ: İstanbul
Câmileri ve Diğer Dînî-Sivil Miʾmârî Yapıları. ed. Ahmed Nezih
Galitekin (İstanbul: İşaret Yayınları, 2001).
BGM Martin, B. G., “A Short History of the Khalwati Order of Dervishes,”
in Nikki R. Keddie (ed.), Scholars, Saints, and Sufis: Muslim
Religious Institutions Since 1500 (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1972), pp. 275–305.
BKTZ Tezcan, Baki, “Searching for Osman: A Reassessment of the
Deposition of the Ottoman Sultan Osman II (1618–1622),” unpub-
lished Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University, 2001.
CAMA Seyyid Seyfullah Kazım b. Nizâmeddîn (d. 1009/1601). Câmiʿüʾl-
Maʿârif, İstanbul: Süleymaniye Ktp. MS Haci Mahmud Efendi 2335.
CF-MA Fleischer, Cornell, Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman
Empire: The Historian Mustafa Âlî (1541–1600) (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1986).
CHVS Çavusoğlu, Semiramis, “The Kadızadeli Movement: An Attempt of
Şerîʿat-Minded Reform in the Ottoman Empire,” unpublished Ph.D.
thesis, Princeton University, 1990.
viii
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Abbreviations ix
CI Imber, Colin, The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650: The Structure of
Power (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002).
DİA Türk Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi, 2nd edn.
DLG Le Gall, Dina, A Culture of Sufism: Naqshbandis in the Ottoman World,
1450–1700 (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2005).
DTZ Terzioğlu, Derin, “Sufi and Dissident in the Ottoman Empire:
Niyâzî-i Misrî (1618–1694),” unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Harvard
University, 1999.
EI2 Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn.
EI3 Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd edn.
ESO Ohlander, Erik S., Sufism in an Age of Transition: ʿUmar al-
Suhrawardî and the Rise of the Islamic Mystical Brotherhoods
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2008).
FA Ferîdüddîn ʿAttâr, Tezkiretüʾl-evliyâ: Tezkiretüʾl-evliyâʾsının Eski
Türkiye Türkçesi ile Tercümesi, ed. Orhan Yavuz (Ankara: Kültür
ve Türizm Bakanlığı, 1988).
GAR Griswold, William J., The Great Anatolian Rebellion (1000–
1020/1591–1611) (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1983).
HA-TFM Hacı ʿAlî (d. after 1074/1664), Tühfetüʾl-mucâhidîn, İstanbul:
Nuruosmaniye Lib., MS 2293.
HSN Mehmed Mecdî Efendi (d. 1000/1591), Hadâʾikuʾş-Şekâʾik-i
Nuʿmâniye (Şekâʾik-i Nuʿmâniye ve Zeyilleri), vol. 1, ed. Abdullah
Özcan (İstanbul: Çağrı Yayınları, 1989).
IJMES International Journal of Middle East Studies
JC-GTH Curry, John J., “The Growth of Turkish Hagiographical Literature
Within the Halveti Order in the 16th and 17th Centuries,” in Hasan
Celâl Güzel et al. (eds), The Turks, vol. 3 (Ankara: Yeni Türkiye,
2002), pp. 912–20.
JC-HWS Curry, John J., “‘Home is Where the Shaykh Is’: The Concept of
Exile in the Hagiography of İbrâhîm-i Gülşeni,” Al-Masâq: Islam
and the Medieval Mediterranean 17:1 (2005), 47–60.
JC-IPP Curry, John J., “The Intersection of Past and Present in the Genesis
of an Ottoman Sufi Order: the life of Cemâl el-Halvetî (d. 900/1494
or 905/1499) and the Origins of the Halveti Tarîqa,” Journal of
Turkish Studies 32 (2008), 121–41.
JESHO Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient
JMIAS Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn ʿArabi Society
JP-DO Paul, Jürgen, Doctrine and Organization: The Khwâjagân
Naqshbandîya in the First Generation after Bahâʾuddîn (Berlin:
Das Arabische Buch, 1998).
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x The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought
JST Trimingham, J. Spencer, The Sufi Orders in Islam (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1971).
JW-CCE Woods, John E., The Aqquyunlu: Clan, Confederation, Empire, rev.
edn (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 1999).
KA Gelibolulu Mustafa ʿAlî (d. 1009/1601), Künhüʾl-ahbar, İstanbul:
Süleymaniye Lib., MS Esʿad Efendi 2612.
KC-BT Kâtip Çelebi (d. 1067/1657), The Balance of Truth, trans. Geoffrey
Lewis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957).
KC-KZ Katip Çelebi (d. 1067/1657), Kesfüʾz-zunûn ʿan esâmi ul-kutûb veʾl-
funûn, 2 vols, 3rd edn (Tehran: al-Maktabat al-Islamiyya, 1947).
KKE Eyüpgiller, Kemal Kutgün, Bir Kent Tarihi: Kastamonu (İstanbul:
Eren Yayıncılık, 1999).
LAK Muhammad ʿAbd al-Hayy al-Laknawî (d. 1303/1886), Al-Fawâʾid
al-bahiyya fî tarâjim al-Hanafiyya (Beirut: Dâr al-Arqam, 1998).
LCH Lâmiʿî Çelebi, Mahmûd b. ʿOsmân b. ʿAlî Nakkâş b. İlyâs (d.
938/1532), Nefehâtüʾl-Üns: Evliyâ Menkıbeleri, eds Süleyman
Uludağ and Mustafa Kara (İstanbul: Marifet Yayınları, 1998).
LH Hulvî, Mahmud Helvacıbaşızade (d. 1064/1654), Lemezât-ı Hulviye
ez-Lamaʿât-ı ʿUlviye, İstanbul: Süleymaniye Lib., MS Halet Efendi
281.
MBEH Behcet, Mehmet, Kastamonu Âsâr-ı Kadîmesi, İstanbul: Matbaʿa-yı
Amire, 1925.
MCZ-KZ Zilfi, Madeline C., “The Kadizadelis: Discordant Revivalism in
Seventeenth-Century İstanbul,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies
45:4 (1986), 251–69.
MCZ-PP Zilfi, Madeline C., The Politics of Piety: The Ottoman Ulema in
the Postclassical Age (1600–1800) (Minneapolis, MN: Bibliotheca
Islamica, 1988).
MDI Schimmel, Annemarie, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill,
NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1975).
MİG Muhyî-yi Gülşenî (d. 1014/1606), Menâkib-i İbrâhîm-i Gülşenî ve
Şemeli-zâde Ahmed Efendi Şîve-i Tarîkat-i Gülşenîye, ed. Tahsin
Yazıcı (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1982).
MİO Oğuz, Muhammed İhsan, Hazret-i Şaʿbân-ı Velî ve Mustafa Çerkeşi,
2nd edn (İstanbul: Oğuz Yayınları, 1995).
MN-Hİ Mehmed Nazmî Efendi (d. 1112/1701), Osmanlılarda Tasavvufî
Hayatı Halvetîlik Örneği: Hediyyetüʾl-İhvân (İstanbul: İhsan
Yayınları, 2005).
MRSY Rıhtım, Mehmet, Seyid Yəhya Bakuvi və Xəlvətilik (Baku: Qismət
Publishing, 2005).
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Abbreviations xi
MSV ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî (d. 1045/1636), Menâkıb-ı Şerîf-i Pîr-i Halvetî
Hazret-i Şaʿbân-ı Veli ve Türbenâme, İstanbul: Süleymaniye Lib.,
MS Hac Mahmud Efendi 4598.
MSV(T) The Türbenâme section of the preceding citation.
NC Clayer, Nathalie, Mystiques, état et société: les Halvetis dans lʾaire
Balkan de la fin du XVe siècle à nos jours (Leiden: E. J. Brill,
1994).
NVA Nevʿîzâde ʿAtâʾî (d. 1044/1635), Hadâʾikuʾl-Hakâʾik fî Tekmîletiʾş-
Şekâʾik (Şekâʾik-i Nuʿmâniye ve Zeyilleri), vol. 2, ed. Abdullah
Özcan (İstanbul: Çağrı Yayınları, 1989).
NYIL Yılmaz, Necdet, Osmanlı Toplumunda Tasavvuf: Sufiler, Devlet ve
Ulema (İstanbul: Osmanlı Araştırmaları Vakfı, 2001).
OF-DS ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî (d. 1045/1636), Risâle-i devrân-ı sufiye min teʾlîf-i
Zenbilli ʿAlî Efendi (K. S.), İstanbul: Atatürk Kitaplığı, MS Osman
Ergin 781/1.
OF-MT ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî (d. 1045/1636), Maqâlat al-tawthîqiyya wa risâlat
al-tawhîdiyya, Istanbul: Süleymaniye Lib., MS Esʿad Efendi
1734/1.
OF-RMN ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî (d. 1045/1636), Risâle-i muslihüʾl-nefs, Istanbul:
Atatürk Kitaplığı, MS Osman Ergin 614/25.
OF-RV ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî (d. 1045/1636), Makâle-i ferdiye ve risâle-i virdiye,
İstanbul: Süleymaniye Lib., MS Esad Efendi 1734/3.
RCR Repp, Richard C., The Müfti of İstanbul: A Study in the Development
of the Ottoman Learned Hierarchy (London: Ithaca Press, 1986).
RÖ-OT Öngören, Reşat, Osmanlılarʾda Tasavvuf: Anadoluʾda Sufiler,
Devlet, ve Ulema (XVI. Yüzyıl) (İstanbul: İz Yayıncılık, 2000).
RÖ-Z Öngören, Reşat, Tarihte bir Aydın Tarikatı: Zeynîler (İstanbul:
İnsan Yayınları, 2003).
RTAJ Mahmûd (Efendi) b. Nafs b. Kamâl b. Maʿsûd (d. c. 967/1560),
Risâlat al-tâjiyya fî tarîqat as-sûfiyya, Istanbul, Süleymaniye Lib.,
MS Esʿad Efendi 1734/2.
SCLO Mehmed Süreyyâ (d. 1327/1909), Sicill-i ʿOsmânî, 4 vols (İstanbul:
Matbaʿa-yı Amire, 1890).
SIV Sivan, Emmanuel, Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern
Politics, 2nd edn (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990).
SM-KM Murad III, Sultan (d. 1003/1595), Kitâb-ı Manâmât, İstanbul:
Nuruosmaniye Lib., MS 2599.
SOTS Chodkiewicz, Michel, Seal of the Saints: Prophethood and Sainthood
in the Doctrine of Ibn ʿArabî, trans. Liadain Sherrard (Cambridge:
The Islamic Texts Society, 1993).
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xii The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought
SPK Chittick, William C., The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-ʿArabiʾs
Metaphysics of Imagination (Albany, NY: State University of New
York Press, 1989).
STI Studia Islamica
THV Sinaneddin b. Yusuf b. Yaʿkub (d. 989/1581), Tezkîretüʾl-Halvetiye,
İstanbul: Süleymaniye Lib., MS Esʿad Efendi 1372/1.
URB Rubin, Uri, The Eye of the Beholder: The Life of Muhammad as
Viewed by the Early Muslims, A Textual Analysis (Princeton, NJ:
Darwin Press, 1995).
ZD Demircioğlu, Ziya, Şeyh Şaʿbân-ı Veli ve Postnîşînleri (Kastamonu:
Azim Matbaası, 1997).
ZVM Ocak, Ahmet Yaşar, Osmanlı Toplumunda Zındıklar ve Mülhidler
(15.–17. Yüzyıllar) (İstanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 1998).
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Acknowledgments
Much like the Muslim mystics that are the subject of this study, I too endured
long years of struggle and had recourse to many different guides during its evo-
lution. As with any endeavor requiring years of primary source research, I have
accumulated many debts that I can never repay in full.
Without the support of my academic advisor, Professor Jane Hathaway, this
work would not have reached completion. Leaving aside the writing of endless
recommendation letters, she has also been an invaluable source of constructive
criticism throughout the process. Indeed, it was she who first suggested that a
study of the Halveti order would prove illuminating in filling gaps within the lit-
erature on Ottoman cultural history for the early modern period. I only hope the
result offers some justification for the time and effort she expended on helping
me produce it.
My thanks also to Professor Carter Findley for his comments on the work as
it evolved over time. Throughout my graduate student training, his unwillingness
to accept anything but the best work I was capable of has been an instrumental
part of my success. Even when overwhelmed by multiple projects as the dis-
sertation process drew to a close, he somehow found time to provide the neces-
sary suggestions and recommendations at critical times. I also thank Professor
Stephen Dale for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of the work during its
evolution. He also cheerfully allowed me to use his seminars as a testing ground
for a number of the arguments advanced here. Without the insights I gained from
him on Central Asian and Iranian history during the medieval and early modern
period, the work might not have advanced beyond its provincial origins.
I also thank Professor Michael Zwettler of the Department of Near Eastern
Languages and Cultures who assisted with challenging Arabic texts I encountered
xiii
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xiv The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought
during the course of my career, and Dr Alam Payind and his staff at the Middle
East Studies Center of Ohio State University, who provided assistance in
obtaining important Title VI FLAS funding that supported the project’s comple-
tion. The Graduate School at Ohio State also provided me with a Presidential
Fellowship for the academic year 2003–4, which allowed me to complete the
dissertation on which this work is based. I also thank my undergraduate advisor,
Professor Carl Petry of Northwestern University, for additional help in the
Presidential Fellowship process.
One of the great joys of this project has been that assistance was not limited
to just one side of the ocean. The American Research Institute in Turkey, Tony
Greenwood, and its staff provided research funding and logistical support for
the project during my first year of research abroad. Thanks also go to Dr Nevzat
Kaya and his staff at the Süleymaniye Library in İstanbul, Turkey, for their
assistance in locating manuscripts and creating digital copies that allowed me
fully utilize critical historical works after my return. My gratitude also extends
to Dr Nail Bayraktar and his staff at the Atatürk Kitaplığı for their help in iden-
tifying, examining and making copies of additional manuscripts from microfilm
there. I also thank Dr Mehmet Saray for assistance in navigating some of the
difficulties posed by working in Turkey, and also Professors Reşat Öngören and
Sait Özervarlı of the İslam Araştırma Merkezi (İSAM) in directing me to impor-
tant resources that contributed to the success of this project, and the staff of the
Nuruosmaniye Library in İstanbul for allowing me to examine a number of rare
works on Ottoman Sufism.
I reserve a special thanks to Professor Mehmet Rıhtım of Qafqaz University
in Baku for sharing the results of his research on the early Halveti order during
the time of Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî with me. I also thank Professors Halil Berktay and
Tülay Artan for offering me the opportunity to present early drafts of my find-
ings at a Sabancı University colloquium in 2001. Finally, I thank the shaykh and
members of the Cerrahî branch of the Halveti order in Istanbul for allowing me
to observe a modern Halveti semâʿ and devrân ceremony in their historic lodge.
Thanks go also to Günhan Börekçi for following the project with interest, and
offering assistance and suggestions multiple times throughout the process of
research and writing. It is no understatement to say that without his help, much
of this project would not have been as insightful. Others who have offered useful
assistance, constructive criticism, or just plain supportive friendship over the
years of this project include Erik Ohlander, Tijana Krstic, Serpil Bilbaşar, Isa
Blumi, Nabil al-Tikriti, James Grehan, Nathalie Clayer, Berat Fındıklı, David
Defries, Febe Armanios, Devin DeWeese, Timothy Gregory, Yücel Yanıkdağ,
Mustafa Shah and Gordon Witty. I also thank my colleagues Eugene Moehring,
David Wrobel, Andy Fry, David Tanenhaus and Paul Werth, along with the rest
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Acknowledgments xv
of my colleagues in the Department of History at the University of Nevada, Las
Vegas for supporting the conclusion of this project as an Assistant Professor
despite growing economic instability in Nevada. Moreover, I am indebted to
Nicola Ramsey, James Dale, my two anonymous readers, and the rest of the staff
at Edinburgh University Press for their suggestions, assistance and extraordinary
degree of speed and professionalism in dealing with a publishing neophyte. I also
wish to thank Dr Robert Dankoff, who offered numerous last-minute suggestions
in regard to translation.
A special mention must go to the late Harvard Professor Şinasi Tekin, his
wife, Gönül Tekin, his student, Professor Selim Kuru, and Professor Wheeler
Thackston for teaching me Ottoman Turkish over the course of two summers in
Ayvalık, Turkey in 1997 and 1998. The paleographical training and experience
I gained allowed me to decipher and gain access to the necessary manuscripts.
Professor Tekin’s sudden passing in the late summer of 2004 was a blow to all
of us, and I can only hope that this study is a fitting contribution to his memory.
Finally, I acknowledge my debt to my mother and father, Joan and John
Curry, Sr. for their ceaseless financial and emotional support during these long
years. Without them, I could not have re-entered graduate school to realize this
work and my other dreams, much less borne the burdens that followed. My
father’s contribution extended to designing the maps for this volume. In addi-
tion, I must thank (and beg forgiveness from) my wife, Suna Curry, for endur-
ing a project that affected her life as much as mine. I also thank her extended
family, both in İstanbul and elsewhere, for making my years of research and life
in Turkey rewarding.
I have undoubtedly forgotten to mention others; please accept the apologies
and gratitude of this hakîr pur-taksîr in response.
John J. Curry
January 2010
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Note on transliteration
Attempting to transliterate words and phrases from Ottoman Turkish, Arabic and
Persian is a difficult task, especially when research ranges across these multiple
linguistic groups. For Ottoman Turkish language words and phrases, I have gen-
erally opted for a transcription modeled on that which appears in the Redhouse
Turkish–English Dictionary, but intersected with a modified form of the translit-
eration system as given by IJMES to represent orthographic conventions such as
long vowels and the Arabic letters hamza (ʾ) and ʿayn. Names and terms appear-
ing in Arabic and Persian defer to IJMES standards; however, as a compromise
between the needs of specialists and non-specialists and to speed the publishing
process, I have opted not to use some of the more complex diacriticals, such as
dots and underlining under the letters d, s, t and z. The assumption here is that
the specialist will not encounter difficulty in decoding the orthography of the
originals if necessary. Inconsistencies invariably remain; where I have not been
able to identify a specific linguistic context for a name or term, I have chosen
whatever rendering seems most widely accepted by the sources themselves.
xvi
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Map 1 The Middle East
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Map 2 Turkey
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Introduction: On the Study of Ottoman
Mystical Traditions
In studying the Ottoman Empire, many scholars have focused heavily on the
social, economic, and political history of its various regions, while neglecting
the field of religious and cultural history. Specialists in the field, regardless of
nationality or ideology, have regarded the Ottoman period as one of cultural and
intellectual stagnation, especially in its later years. Recently, however, scholars
have begun to rethink their perceptions about the Ottomans and assess more
objectively their important contributions to the religious, intellectual, and cul-
tural life of their time. Nevertheless, a lack of critical studies on this aspect of
the Ottoman legacy has hampered attempts to present a coherent picture of the
Empire’s history.1
The majority of the past six decades of scholarship has targeted political and
economic history, seeking to explain the trajectory of the Ottoman enterprise
within the realm of secular phenomena. However, it is becoming increasingly
clear that this economic and political history cannot, and should not, be com-
pletely separated from its religio-cultural background. Studies tackling religious
and cultural topics indicate that both intellectual production and everyday reli-
gious activity among Ottomans enjoyed an extraordinary dynamism. In addition,
political and economic crises during the Empire’s history often went hand-in-
hand with spiritual crises that were equally influential in shaping the course of
events.2 This is often obscured by studies of modern mysticism: for example, in
a study of mystics in Egypt during the 1980s, Valerie Hoffman noted the gener-
ally apolitical form which their mystical expression took. She concluded that
the political power of mystical orders during Ottoman times thus represented an
anomaly rather than the norm.3
One of the Ottoman orders to which Hoffman referred was the Halveti
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2 The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought
(Arabic: Khalwatî), a Sufi order that had appeared in the region of Azerbaijan
and northwest Iran in the wake of the Mongol invasions of the seventh/thir-
teenth century and spread into the Ottoman domains within three centuries of
its emergence. The Halveti order played an important role in Ottoman politics
and society that remains poorly understood. It often took the lead in defend-
ing Islamic mysticism, philosophy, and practice from factions that insisted on
puritanical interpretations of the Qurʾan and other sacred texts. These debates
centered on issues that still divide contemporary Muslim communities, such as
conflicts over what constitutes acceptable forms of Muslim belief and practice.4
Furthermore, the order retained a broad public appeal, notably in parts of the
Balkans and Asia Minor, which continued well into modern times. This sus-
tained popularity may have derived in part from Halveti efforts to propagate their
vision of Islam into regions that did not receive the direct attention of political
and religious leaders in the imperial centers. In contrast, others argue that their
growth resulted from a conscious collaborative effort between Halvetis and the
Ottoman government from the tenth/sixteenth century onward.5
The Halveti order forces us to reflect on the role of mystical religious institu-
tions in pre-modern Muslim societies like the Ottoman Empire. Traditionally,
past research has advanced several answers that act as conventional wisdom
on the subject. The earliest theoretical foundations, laid by the first genera-
tion scholars during the Republican period of Turkish history, suggested that
Turkish-speaking mystics from the east, having founded institutional centers
(tekkes, or lodges) in Asia Minor from the Seljuk period onward, acted as protec-
tors for a population that was increasingly strained by conflicts with Byzantium,
the Mongols and others. They also argued that the Turkic Sufism espoused by
such figures as Ahmed Yesevî in Central Asia and Yunus Emre in Anatolia were
more influential in Turkish history than other variants.6
Following this lead, subsequent scholarship posited that Sufi orders acted
as “colonizers” willing to take doctrinally flexible forms of Islamic belief and
practice to the physical and spiritual frontiers of the Muslim world to lay the
foundation for their eventual incorporation into the Islamic world.7 However,
questions about the extent to which this process actually took place, or whether it
was even a consciously articulated goal of the Ottoman rulers still seems open to
debate, since tensions between Halveti Sufi leaders and the states to which they
were subject clearly exist in historical sources.
More recent scholarship has challenged the idea that state and mystical
orders worked in lockstep, noting that Ottoman Sufi orders like the Halveti were
often at odds with the state. Some have argued that Sufi orders offered an outlet
for those who could not find spiritual comfort in literalist readings of Islamic
sacred texts and rituals; they could even act as safe havens for the propagation

Introduction 3
of heterodox movements.8 Anthropological variations on this theme, especially
in the context of North Africa, have further argued that Sufi leaders provided a
religious system that was flexible enough to mix with popular tradition and local
custom among uneducated and illiterate majorities.9 These scholarly projects
posit instead the existence of religious tension between central, urban-based
authorities and their more rural, provincial subjects. But Ernest Gellner recog-
nized a problem of terminology in attempting to define the category of a “Sufi”
in Morocco, and chose to contrast two different groups to the more recognized
tradition of scholarly Islam embodied in the ʿulama class:
Under the general category of Sufism, people tend, for instance, to group
together genuine mystics and tribal holy men whose connection with mysti-
cism is minimal . . . Roughly speaking: urban Sufi mysticism is an alternative
to the legalistic, restrained, arid (as it seems to its critics) Islam of the ʿulama.
Rural and tribal “Sufism” is a substitute for it. In the one case, and alternative is
sought for the Islam of the ʿulama because it does not fully satisfy. In the other
case, a substitute for it is required because, though its endorsement is desired, it
is, in its proper and urban form, locally unavailable, or is unusable in the tribal
context.10
While accepting a fundamental contradiction between scholarly Islam (as

embodied in the reference to an ʿulama class) and mysticism, Gellner also
posited a distinction between urban- and rural-based mysticism that implicitly
determined the inferiority of the latter. As a result, his views have generated
considerable criticism within the discipline of anthropology recently.11
A related trend in discussions about the emergence of Sufi orders in later
eras was to portray them as second-rate heirs to a higher intellectual tradition
that appeared during a “golden age” of Islamic intellectual and cultural produc-
tion that occurred between the third/ninth and seventh/thirteenth centuries. In
contrast to mystics of the formative period, marked by greater intellectual and
personal freedom to pursue mystical speculation, the Sufi orders that emerged
over the course of the later medieval and early modern period became increas-
ingly enmeshed in dogma and ritual that sapped their creative spirit and turned
them into stagnant institutions. As Trimingham suggested, early Sufism rep-
resented a “natural expression of personal religion,” as opposed to the more
“orthodox” Islam of the ʿulama, which represented “institutionalized religion
based on authority, a one-way master–slave relationship, with its emphasis upon
ritual observance and a legalistic morality.”12 These views represent a projection
of the good attributes of mysticism back into the distant past, while demeaning
its value in more recent eras.13 With the adoption of this Orientalist construction

of Sufism’s history, Western and Muslim intellectuals alike came to characterize
the orders as being in need of reform, if not abolition.14
In contrast, other scholars have pointed out that Sufi organizations formed
one of many potential reference points available to Muslim populations, which
could assist in their daily struggle to maintain or improve their lives. In her
study of the religious leadership of the Ottoman Empire during the eleventh/
seventeenth and twelfth/eighteenth centuries, Madeline Zilfi argued that Sufi
orders like the Halveti in İstanbul were attracting an increasingly broad-based
following.15 As a result, Halveti leaders also rose to positions of authority. A
corollary of this was that members of the Halveti could also negotiate with the
state on behalf of local communities during political or economic crises which
increasingly disrupted the empire, especially in the turbulent years after the latter
half of the tenth/sixteenth century.16 With the arrival of modernity, however,
the strengthening of the state and the spread of better education and literacy,
complemented by challenges from Western-based intellectual currents, caused
mysticism to become increasingly marginalized and relegated to the realm of
superstition and social backwardness. As one observer suggested:
[T]he delegitimization of Sufism in the Middle East was accelerated by modern

conditions and especially by the dominant power of the central state, but was also
rooted in a deep and pervasive conflict between Sufism, with its apotheosis of
saints and demand for absolute obedience from disciples, and the characteristic
Middle Eastern and Islamic values of equality and autonomy. It is no surprise
then to find that Sufis have slowly lost their essential role in Middle Eastern
society, and now serve only as mediators in marginal tribal areas, or provide
ecstatic performances in impoverished communities, or serve as guides for cul-
tured elites seeking a less demanding, more aesthetic, intellectualized version of
Islam. This is where Middle Eastern Sufism is today, and most likely will remain
for the foreseeable future.17
This idea posits that the appeal of Sufi leaders has declined precipitously, except
in certain rare cases where the orders were able to adapt themselves for survival
in new contexts.18 Yet even this observer was forced to qualify his own asser-
tions by contrasting the general situation described here to that of South Asia,
where the greater autonomy of the orders under British colonial rule and cultural
tendencies toward greater acceptance of hierarchy in the community had allowed
Sufism to maintain its position or even gain in strength. Even more interest-
ingly, he mentioned Turkey as another exception that does not necessarily fit the
pattern of Sufi stagnation in modern times.19
Such explanations neatly encapsulate political, social, and intellectual roles

Introduction 5
for Islamic mysticism in a broad historical sense. But do these assumptions really
encompass all mystical orders, especially in their local contexts and manifesta-
tions? Were the first Muslim mystics appearing in predominantly non-Muslim
contexts invariably acting as fifth-columnists allied with Muslim rulers to incor-
porate non-Muslim peoples into their empires? Did medieval Muslim mystics
reject the opinions of jurisprudents, theologians, and their legacy of canonical
scholarship in favor of oppositional interpretations of Islam? How could these
organizations, based on principles that stressed the renunciation of worldly things
and contempt for temporal political and economic power, act as a base for social
advancement or even political power themselves? Finally, there is the question
of mysticism’s so-called “irrelevance” in the face of modernity – is mysticism
really an outdated intellectual trend, or does it still remain an alternative path
to which Muslims can turn, despite negative associations with superstition and
irrationality that many have attached to it?20
In recent years, the field of Near Eastern studies has seen an upsurge of
interest in mysticism and mystical orders. New research, often focused on the
modern era, frequently takes as its goal an elucidation of the fractures between
local conceptions of the mystical path and the meta-narrative of the classical
philosophy of mysticism as elaborated by the great thinkers of Muslim history.21
In contrast to the hierarchy of Christian saints achieved through official canoni-
zation by a central authority in Catholicism, Muslim saints are inherently local
in character; thus, the nature of Muslim mysticism and sainthood varies con-
siderably from one context to another. This is because the relationship between
a devotee and his teacher is of paramount importance in conveying mystical
knowledge in the Muslim context, and because normative Islam rejects an offi-
cial hierarchy of saints along Roman Catholic lines.22
As a result, studies of mysticism tend to break down into two types. The first
is anthropological studies which usually focus on a specific group in the hope of
elaborating wider theories about human thought and behavior. The second group
focuses its attention upon the historical development and classical elaboration of
the intellectual and philosophical theory of Islamic mystical thought in its afore-
mentioned “golden age.” Yet there is a basic and obvious disjunction between the
two types of research. The first often treats areas or groups that might be labeled
“marginal” in terms of wider influence or importance for Islamic intellectual
history as a whole. The subjects of many respected anthropological studies on
Muslim mysticism and religious practice tend to cluster on the geographical or
economic fringes of the Islamic world, with an imbalance of studies focusing on
Morocco,23 Indonesia,24 and, more recently, Yemen.25 One is often struck by just
how limited in size or how marginal the mystical groups in question are. On the
other hand, the dominant studies of classical mysticism in the Islamic world are

often hampered by a focus on the highest levels of philosophical and intellectual
thought, with little attention given to how these ideas might have been received
in practice throughout subsequent periods of history.26 So can a way be found
to bridge this gap between the anthropological and historical aspects of Islamic
mysticism? How might researchers analyze Sufi orders in a pre-modern context,
where direct access to personal interactions with the subjects under study, so
integral to the anthropological approach, are lacking?
Despite attempts by recent scholars to challenge the hegemonic position of
modern thought and concepts in Muslims’ interpretation and practice of their
beliefs, and to link modern practice with classical intellectual conceptions, a
major field of inquiry which could help to bridge this gap has largely been ignored.
The Ottoman Empire, which encompassed the entire eastern Mediterranean and
most of North Africa at its height, was a critical historical entity bridging the
transition of the region from the medieval period into the modern. Not surpris-
ingly, scholars have frequently had trouble fitting the Ottoman Empire into
general theoretical frameworks for Islamic civilization – it is often portrayed as a
“special case” that does not fit into either the “medieval” or “modern” period of
Islamic history, thereby ghettoizing the field of Ottoman studies as a whole.27 To
make matters even more difficult, as William Chittick pointed out in his article
on Islamic mysticism from the seventh/thirteenth through the twelfth/eighteenth
centuries in the Encyclopedia of Islam, there is a glaring gap in our knowledge
about mystical literature and thought from the Ottoman period.28
Yet we are not completely lacking in resources. Other recent projects have
revealed the importance of the Ottoman context for analysis of the historical
trajectory of Sufism. Dina Le Gall, in her recent study of the Ottoman Nakşbendi
order, has demonstrated that previous conceptions about the Nakşbendi leader-
ship from the ninth/fifteenth to the eleventh/seventeenth centuries do not hold
up under serious scrutiny of the Ottoman sources. Later incarnations of the
Nakşbendi order’s leadership, emanating from the Indian subcontinent, were
more aggressive in promoting a sharîʿa-based orthodoxy and in taking a “mis-
sionary” approach to replicating their order in Ottoman lands. But in earlier
periods of Ottoman history, Le Gall found that retrojecting these stereotypes
of the later Nakşbendi back onto earlier generations are misleading. In fact, the
Ottoman Nakşbendi of the early modern period proved to be much the oppo-
site of more contemporary Nakşbendi: extremely diverse in their outlook and
often skeptical about extending their teachings to broader swathes of Ottoman
society.29 Such findings provide encouragement to rethinking the role and prac-
tice of mysticism in Islamic history, thereby examining more critically the pre-
vailing historical interpretations of these Sufi orders in political, religious, social,
and economic spheres of life.

Introduction 7
The present work will contribute to this growing body of literature by focus-
ing specifically on the experiences of the founders of the Halveti order and one of
its specific sub-branches, known as the Şaʿbâniye. An examination of the order’s
literary production from the ninth/fifteenth through twelfth/eighteenth centuries
demonstrates that important transformations in the order’s doctrines and pri-
orities took place in various contexts as the Halveti adapted to changing condi-
tions both before and after their incorporation into the Ottoman Empire. Before
proceeding to a detailed examination of the Şaʿbâniye sub-branch of the order,
however, the emergence of new historical sources force us to re-examine the
master narrative of Halveti origins and how they became Ottoman subjects. Only
then can we proceed to the story of how Şaʿbân-ı Veli, founder of the Şaʿbâniye,
established himself in the town of Kastamonu in north-central Anatolia.
The issues raised by the history of the Şaʿbâniye point the way toward new
insights for the study of mysticism. For one, the historical period examined
here suggests an environment marked by challenges aimed at inherited forms of
spiritual belief and practice. There was an increasing need to clearly codify and
spread basic knowledge about mysticism to make it available beyond just well-
educated circles of the elect. Moreover, a growing awareness emerged that the
concerns of mystical ideology could not be completely divorced from political
and social realities – if in fact they ever were. All this raises future questions
about how to compare the trends seen here with those of the contemporary events
of the Reformation and Wars of Religion in Europe, even given critical distinc-
tions that marked the European context (such as the extensive use of the printing
press, for instance). Furthermore, it is also worth considering the ultimate tra-
jectory of the Halveti in the Ottoman heartlands, who declined in numbers and
influence relative to the arrival of the aforementioned Mujaddidî-based branches
of the Nakşbendi order from the thirteenth/nineteenth century onward. Even
here, this apparent decline masks the fact that spiritual descendants of Halveti
sub-branches continued to spread across various regions of northern and western
Africa.
This book provides a revised overview of Halveti origins during a transitional
period following the Mongol invasions that culminated in the order’s implanta-
tion in Ottoman society. More importantly, by following the evolution of the key
sub-branches of the Şaʿbâniye, scholars can better address the problems evoked
by the incomplete literature on this subject. The book’s narrative contrasts the
philosophical outlook of the Şaʿbâniye’s eponymous founder to the vision of
the order propagated by its successors, who had to adapt to a changing Ottoman
context. From this foundation, historians can establish a framework for compari-
son with both modern and medieval mystical orders and their practitioners that
can shed light on the historical transitions that occurred in both their structures

and intellectual production. It can also shed light on the influence of movements
of religious renewal and purification on Islamic and Ottoman history.
Before embarking on this study, however, a brief discussion of the basic
ritual practices of the Halveti is required. The basis of Sufism lies in the relation-
ship between the shaykh or spiritual guide (mürşid ), and the devotee or “seeker”
(mürîd). The seeker must offer an oath of allegiance, or bîʿat, to the shaykh, and
the shaykh must decide whether to accept that declaration and confirm the seeker
as one of his followers. In so doing, the seeker would often renounce all their
worldly possessions and repent of the sins of their former life. He or she was then
required to devote himself or herself wholeheartedly to the shaykh, and to report
any events or spiritual experiences of significance and receive the shaykh’s guid-
ance and interpretation of them.
Furthermore, important ceremonial occurrences marked the life of a Halveti
dervish. The first of these is the halvet, derived from the Arabic word khalwa or
“seclusion.” The members of the Halveti order often engage in spiritual disci-
pline by secluding themselves in small rooms or cells for long periods of time
to grapple with spiritual problems or discipline their carnal souls – these cells
still exist in the Şaʿbân-ı Veli mosque even today (see Figure 1). Participants
do not speak to anyone during this time, and emerge from their cells only for
ritual prayers. The halvet ceremony could extend from a short retreat lasting a
couple of days to the more formidable erbaʿîn, lasting forty days. During the
halvet, the devotee ate little or no food, drank as little as possible, and tried
to avoid falling asleep. Indeed, a mark of sanctity within the order was the
ability to carry out multiple forty-day retreats while breaking one’s fast only
once every ten days. Any dreams or spiritual visions the devotee had while in
the halvet had to be reported to the shaykh immediately for interpretation and
guidance.
Another important ritual was performances of the semâʿ and devrân. These
rituals were usually performed on Thursday evenings at sundown, and began
with a gathering of the order’s followers in a mosque or Sufi lodge to listen to
recitations from the Qurʾan and the chanting of the Halveti litany of the Vird-i
settâr. Following the completion of the ritual, the assembled group formed them-
selves into concentric circles, and following the lead of the shaykh, would begin
to swing their heads from right to left while chanting “there is no god save God”
(lâ ilaha illâ Allah), often to the accompaniment of musical instruments and
rhythmic percussion. Placing their right hand on the shoulder, and their left hand
on the waist of the person next to them, the devotees circled around the shaykh
until the ceremony reached a climatic state of ecstasy, at which point the shaykh
would cry out Hû Allah (He is God!), and break free into the center of the circle
as the devotees milled around him in a state of utter joy at the proximity of God’s

Introduction 9
Figure 1 Interior of the Şaʿbân-ı Veli mosque in Kastamonu, Turkey
presence. Following the ceremony, a period of rest, followed by a modest meal

or drinks with the shaykh concluded the gathering.30
The devotees and shaykhs of the Halveti order also placed a high premium
on their spiritual ancestry, and lived in close proximity to tombs of their pious
figures if possible. Halveti shaykhs also preserved an initiatic chain of authori-
ties, known as a silsile, that linked themselves back to the teaching of the Prophet
Muhammad across the sweep of Islamic history. As the shaykh authorized the
best of his followers to act as his representatives, or his successors (halîfe) after
his death, they were taught to preserve the historical memory of these connec-
tions and to insert themselves into the silsile. It is to the origins of this process
that we must now turn.
Notes
1 For a critique of the “uneven report card” of Ottoman historians on cultural history, see
Leslie Peirce, “Twentieth-Century Historians and Historiography of the Ottoman Empire:
The Early Centuries,” Mediterranean Historical Review 19:1 (2004), 13–17; Jane
Hathaway then echoed Peirce’s concerns about this lacuna for twelfth/eighteenth-century

Ottoman history; see Jane Hathaway, “Rewriting Eighteenth-Century Ottoman History,”
Mediterranean Historical Review 19:1 (2004), 38–42.
2 For an illuminating example of this, see MCZ-PP and MCZ-KZ.
3 Valerie Hoffman, Sufism, Mystics, and Saints in Modern Egypt (Columbia, SC: University
of South Carolina Press, 1995), pp. 15, 266–7 and 362; many contemporary Egyptians
expressed this view through their condemnation of one shaykh’s relationship with
President Gamal ʿAbd al-Nasir during the 1960s.
4 For an example of how Sufi practices continue in modern times while also raising the
suspicions of their contemporaries, see David Meyer Buchman, “The Pedagogy of
Perfection: Levels of Complementarity Within and Between the Beliefs and Practices of
the Shadhiliya/ʿAlawiya Sufi Order of Sanaʿa, Yemen,” unpublished Ph.D. thesis, State
University of New York at Stony Brook, 1998.
5 NC, pp. 363–6.
6 Fuat Köprülü, Türk Edebiyatında İlk Mutasavvıflar, ed. Orhan F. Köprülü, 4th edn
(Ankara: Gaye Matbaacılık, 1981), pp. 195–217.
7 The classic exposition of this thesis, representing in part an ideological attempt to dem-
onstrate Turkish origins for Ottoman institutions, appears in Ömer Lutfi Barkan, “İstilâ
Devirlerinin Kolonizatör Türk Dervişleri ve Zaviyeler,” Vakıflar Dergisi 2 (1942),
279–304, followed by a catalogue of Sufi foundations that appear in the evkaf registers
of various cities. Barkan’s thinking is echoed in Nathalie Clayer’s study of the “implan-
tation” of Halvetî dervishes in the Balkans during the tenth/sixteenth and eleventh/
seventeenth century; see NC, pp. 143–79.
8 Ahmet Yaşar Ocak references this idea in his work on atheism and heresy in the early modern
Ottoman Empire, and situates the Halvetî order squarely in the context of providing shelter
for those holding unorthodox ideas about Islam; ZVM, pp. 119–31. In doing so, he stakes out
a position somewhat contrary to Clayer’s, who argued that some prominent Halvetî leaders
were at the forefront of a “sunnitization” campaign in the Balkans; NC, pp. 63–112.
9 This viewpoint appeared in the anthropological works of Ernest Gellner, often in
a Moroccan context; see Ernest Gellner, Muslim Society (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1981), pp. 114–30. However, these views can be traced back as far as
the early Orientalist writings of Ignaz Goldziher, for example, “The Veneration of Saints
in Islam,” Muslim Studies, vol. 2, trans. C. R. Barber and S. M. Stern (London: George
Allen & Unwin, 1971), pp. 255–341.
10 Gellner, Muslim Society, p. 115.
11 See, for instance, the nuanced summary of this debate in Dale F. Eickelman, The Middle
East and Central Asia: An Anthropological Approach, 3rd edn (Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, 1998), pp. 251–4.
12 JST, p. 2.
13 See, e.g., the criticism of Trimingham’s thesis by Katherine Pratt Ewing, Arguing
Sainthood: Modernity, Psychoanalysis and Islam (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
1997), pp. 46–47.
14 In an odd echo of Western discourses of modernity, Muslim thinkers have also blamed
Sufi orders for corrupting the spirit of classical Islamic thought and practice; see, for
example, Fazlur Rahman, Islam, 2nd edn (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press,
1979), pp. 235–54. More recent scholarship suggests that this shared paradigm is rooted
in ideas about modernization trajectories that should be questioned; see Ewing, Arguing
Sainthood, pp. 2–4 and 41–4.

Introduction 11
15 MCZ-PP, pp. 30–40.
16 Suraiya Faroqhi, “Sainthood as a Means of Self-Defense in Seventeenth-Century
Ottoman Anatolia,” in Grace Martin Smith and Carl W. Ernst (eds), Manifestations of
Sainthood in Islam (İstanbul: Isis Press, 1993), pp. 193–208. The article should be read
in conjunction with Faroqhi’s study of population decline during this period: “Population
Rise and Fall in Anatolia,” Middle Eastern Studies, 15 (1979), 322–45.
17 Charles Lindholm, “Prophets and Pirs: Charismatic Islam in the Middle East and South
Asia,” in Pnina Werbner and Helene Basu (eds), Embodying Charisma: Modernity,
Locality and the Performance of Emotion in Sufi Cults (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 224.
18 A Sufi order in Egypt that was able to buck the trend of decline in the mid-twentieth
century appears in Michael Gilsenan, Saint and Sufi in Modern Egypt: An Essay in the
Sociology of Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973).
19 Lindholm, “Prophets and Pirs,” pp. 224–9, see also p. 230, n. 10.
20 Hoffman, Sufism, Mystics, and Saints in Modern Egypt, pp. 1–4.
21 Katherine Ewing’s work is a good example of a growing critique of the assumptions
undergirding much of twentieth-century scholarship. Specifically, she analyzes how
paradigmatic ideas about medieval and modern Sufism were created to define contempo-
rary Sufis in India and Pakistan as negative influences in support of the British colonial
project; see Ewing, Arguing Sainthood, pp. 47–64.
22 See, for example, the evocation of the importance of this relationship between a recent
author and her own Bektâşî master in the United States; Frances Trix, Spiritual Discourse:
Learning with an Islamic Master (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1993); see also Eickelman, The Middle East and Central Asia, pp. 274–88.
23 Classics in the field are Clifford Geertz, Islam Observed: Religious Development in
Morocco and Indonesia (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1968); Ernest
Gellner, Saints of the Atlas (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1969); Vincent
Crapanzano, The Hamadsha: A Study in Moroccan Ethnopsychiatry (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1973); Dale Eickelman, Moroccan Islam: Tradition and
Society in a Pilgrimage Center (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1976).
24 Mark Woodward, Islam in Java: Normative Piety and Mysticism in the Sultanate of
Yogyakarta (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1989); John R. Bowen, Muslims
Through Discourse: Religion and Ritual in Gayo Society (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1994).
25 See the aforementioned thesis of David Meyer Buchman, esp. n. 4.
26 These works have been extremely valuable in advancing the study of Muslim mysticism.
However, the foundations that they laid are often not integrated with studies of Sufism
in the modern period. Two outstanding examples are Annemarie Schimmel’s Mystical
Dimensions of Islam and William Chittick’s The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-ʿArabi’s
Metaphysics of Imagination. On the other hand, for an amusing account of how attempts
to reconcile the historical traditions of early Sufis with modern realities can go awry in
anthropological studies, see William Hickman, “Ümmi Kemâl in Anatolian Tradition,”
Turcica 14 (1982), 155–67.
27 Rifaʿat ʿAli Abou-El-Haj, Formation of the Modern State: The Ottoman Empire Sixteenth
to Eighteenth Centuries (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991), pp.
1–11; see also Gellner, Muslim Society, pp. 1–84.
28 William C. Chittick, “Tasavvuf: 2) Ibn al-ʿArabi and After in the Arabic and Persian
Lands,” EI2, vol. 10 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998), pp. 317 and 321.

29 DLG.
30 For a good overview of the ceremonial, ritual and liturgical practice of a sub-branch of the
Halvetî in Egypt, see Earle H. Waugh, Visionaries of Silence: The Reformist Sufi Order
of the Demirdashiya al-Khalwatiya in Cairo (Cairo: The American University in Cairo
Press, 2008), pp. 56–93.

PART I
. . .
THE RISE AND SPREAD
.
OF THE HALVETI
ORDER FROM ITS
ORIGINS THROUGH
THE ELEVENTH/
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

INTRODUCTION
The historical background for the rise of Islamic mysticism in its formative
phases (second/eighth to seventh/thirteenth centuries) is beyond the scope of
this work, and is treated in a much more thorough fashion elsewhere.1 However,
since many of our sources for the Halveti are grounded in hagiographies (i.e.
biographical works describing the lives and activities of pious figures), it is
worth briefly tracing the roots of this literary genre and how it grew out of earlier
periods of Islamic history.
After the revelation of the Qurʾan to the Prophet Muhammad, his compan-
ions and successors began to collect anecdotal materials about his sayings, acts,
and personality in the hope of a better understanding of how to conduct their
own lives. As the era of the Prophet and his immediate contemporaries receded
into history, anecdotes about them having varying levels of acceptance among
the Muslim community (known in Arabic as hadîth) began to circulate around
the various regions that made up the early Arab empire. Some of these anecdotes
were intended to clarify points of doctrine with regard to the new faith. However,
this material was also mixed with other types of narratives and legends that
detailed not only the Prophet, but his companions, the first four caliphs (succes-
sors to the Prophet as leaders of the Muslim community), and other well-known
figures who developed a following. This sîra literature sometimes came into
conflict with emerging doctrinal positions developing among religious leaders of
the Muslim community. However, in the end much of this literature also found
a canonical place among Muslims; in time, parts of it were integrated into the
hadîth.
Parallel to these developments taking place between the second/eighth and
fourth/tenth centuries, the contours of Islamic mysticism, or Sufism, also began
15

to develop. It would initially be characterized by the activities of well-known
ascetics (zuhhâd), whose activities and growing prominence resulted in their
being acclaimed by fellow Muslims as figures of extraordinary grace and piety,
called evliyâ (Arabic: awliyâ’), who were viewed as being the “friends of
God.” Naturally, the model of compiling oral anecdotes about their activities
and sayings that could serve as a guide for individual conduct would mirror
the process that documented the Prophet Muhammad and his companions. But
the latter half of the fourth/tenth and the fifth/eleventh century seem to have
witnessed a major upsurge in the creation of a distinctly Sufi mystical literature
that achieved wide acceptance. A number of authors, writing in either Persian
or Arabic, established large biographical compilations documenting hundreds
of figures from Islam’s formative centuries who were viewed as exemplary
holy men (and, in some cases, women). While the earliest compilations appear
not to have survived into modern times or were subsumed in later works,2 this
transition point began with the appearance of Abû Nasr al-Sarrâj’s (d. 378/988)
Kitâb al-lumaʿ and culminated in the compilation of Abû ʿAbd al-Rahman
Sulamî’s (d. 412/1021) Tabaqât al-sufiyya. Sulamî was the first to adopt the
organizational framework of dividing his accounts of the early Sufi masters
into five distinct classes (tabaqât) based on their chronological position in
history. Other authors followed his example by introducing other models,
such as the work of Abû Nuʿaym al-Isfahânî (d. 429/1038), who sought to
divide his subjects into two categories: “sufis” and ascetics. Later writers
and Persian translators, such as Hujwirî (d. 464/1072), Harawî (d. 481/1088),
and Ibn al-Jawzî (d. 594/1198) were influenced by these foundational works and
expanded upon them.3
After this initial flurry of activity, various hagiographical literatures prolifer-
ated throughout the Islamic world, occupying literary spaces between biography,
history, and spiritual mythology. Modern scholars have struggled with their
content, since they often incorporate miraculous or supernatural occurrences that
have been deemed incompatible with the secular phenomena in which modern
thinkers ground their historiography. Nevertheless, historians have still been
tempted by some narratives in Islamic hagiography, for they often intersect with
important and recognizable historical events and personages. Moreover, others
have noted that even when the narratives are not “believable,” they still retain a
historical context that provides a window onto a now lost worldview of the audi-
ences who enjoyed hearing them recounted. As one scholar put it:
. . . hagiographical narratives . . . deserve to be liberated from the tyranny of blind

facticity . . . knowing whether the events actually happened has generally been
far less important than the tales’ ability to create a sense of connection with the

Introduction to Part I 17
larger community of believers, entertain and edify, and allow the listening and
reading public to identify immediately with the characters.4
This book will likewise seek to present and preserve the voices of narrators
as much as possible to better convey the power these narratives had for their
audiences.
In order to fully contextualize important Halveti figures within the mul-
tiplicity of sub-branches that came to mark the order, this section provides a
revised overview of the broad sweep of the order’s macro-history. Luckily,
for the Halveti order, the groundwork for this macro-history already exists.
The German historian, Hans Joachim Kissling, first took up the subject of the
Halveti in the early 1950s with the publication of an article about the rise of the
Ottoman Halveti, followed by another on the Şaʿbâniye sub-branch of the order.5
B. G. Martin elaborated upon Kissling’s contribution in a subsequent article,
one of the few to be written in English, and Ernst Bannerth mapped the contours
of the Halveti expansion in Egypt in another extensive article.6 These pioneer-
ing studies culminated in an extensive examination of the Halveti order in the
Balkans by the French scholar, Nathalie Clayer, which developed a theoretical
framework about its role in Ottoman history.7 These works contributed various
pieces of the Halveti puzzle; all framed their contribution as important for
Ottoman political and religious life.
However, interpreting the Halveti order as playing a role in Ottoman ideol-
ogy and state formation has been more controversial. Some have questioned
whether the relationship between the order and the Ottoman state was invariably
positive. In a seminal article, Madeline Zilfi examined the puritanical religious
reformers that came to be known as the Kâdızâdeli movement and their oppo-
sitional stance toward the Halveti and other Sufi movements. This work later
evolved into a book detailing the impact of the Kâdızâdeli–Halveti conflict
on the evolution of the Ottoman religious and scholarly hierarchy, in which
she concluded that neither Halveti nor Kâdızâdeli were able to gain complete
influence over it. But by the time of the twelfth/eighteenth century, when the
conflict receded, both factions may have been marginalized in favor of more
narrowly-defined scholarly hierarchies tied to exclusive, powerful families.8
More recently, an unpublished study of the eleventh/seventeenth-century Halveti
shaykh, Niyâzî-i Misrî (d. 1105/1694), argued for framing his life and career in
terms of a pattern of dissident resistance against Ottoman persecution rather than
a friendly collaboration.9
Part I of this book will reassess this contested historiography through a re-
evaluation of primary sources for the formation and spread of the Halveti order
from its vague origins in Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran. While many of

Kissling’s ideas about the basic contours of the order remain relevant, and sub-
sequent contributors to the study of the Halveti have also contributed key parts
of the broader history of the order, the conclusions these studies reached must be
coupled with a more critical evaluation of the sources on which they were based.
This, in turn, will set the stage for a more in-depth examination of the Şaʿbâniye
sub-branch that follows. Furthermore, recent work by Turkish scholars has dis-
covered additional sources that still remain largely untapped.10
However, engaging in this process is among the greatest challenges from a
historiographical perspective. The narratives about early Halveti shaykhs, and
origin myths for the order itself raise questions about the reliability of historical
memory among Ottoman hagiographers of later eras. The first section tackles
the task of reconstructing the origins of the Halveti during the formative period
of later medieval Islam. For the Halveti shaykhs, their path dated back to the
time of the Prophet Muhammad and his son-in-law ʿAlî b. Abû Tâlib, but
their actual context of origin was much later. Chapter 1 begins with a critical
examination of the chain of authorities that make up the Halveti silsile, a spir-
itual and chronological genealogy of religious figures anchoring the religious
legitimacy of contemporary Halveti shaykhs by linking them to the founding
figures of Islam. It will also address the extent to which Halveti conceptions of
their distant past reflect what historians now know about the formative centuries
of Islamic mysticism. This evaluation continues up to the time of the collapse of
the Mongol Ilkhanids and the turbulent decades that followed in the eighth/four-
teenth century. It locates the true origins of the Halveti order among a mixture of
influences, including the founders of the Suhrawardiyya order in Baghdad, who
inherited the mantle of previous mystical trends in Islamic history. However,
the Suhrawardiyya components embedded in the order’s ideological grounding
also came to be intertwined with more elusive elements grounded in charismatic
Sufi movements tied to figures like Muhammad al-Halvetî, ʿÖmer el-Halvetî and
Akhî Mîrem el-Halvetî.
Chapter 2 grapples with an equally murky historical context, despite narrow-
ing chronological proximity to contemporary Ottoman sources. It provides an
overview of the leaders credited with the founding and systematization of what
would become the Ottoman Halveti order after the Timurid irruption at the end
of the eighth/fourteenth century. It also evaluates narratives that have survived
about a series of shaykhs active over the course of the ninth/fifteenth-century
section of the Halveti silsile. In particular, it analyzes the tensions that marked
the order through a critical burst of activity initiated by the order’s “second pîr”,
Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî (d. 869/1465), which was instrumental in spreading the order
westward into Anatolia. Only after this point does more solid historical ground
emerge, as the order registered its presence more firmly in the consciousness

Introduction to Part I 19
of Ottoman historical writing during the Empire’s rise to hegemony in the
Near East. From there, we can trace the spread and evolution of several major
branches of the Halveti order from the second half of the ninth/fifteenth century
through the concurrent process of expansion of the Ottoman state through to the
end of the tenth/sixteenth century. This will include an analysis of the careers
of critical Halveti figures such as Cemâl el-Halvetî (d. 905/1499), İbrâhîm-i
Gülşeni (d. 940/1534), Sinâneddîn Yûsuf b. Yaʿkûb el-Germiyânî (d. 979/1571),
and Şücâʿuddîn Efendi (d. 997/1588), personal confidant to Sultan Murad III. In
conclusion, the full picture allows a re-evaluation of the ambiguous role played
by prominent Halveti shaykhs and their followers concurrent with the rise of the
Ottomans to regional power.
Notes
1 For a good survey of Islamic mysticism from a historical perspective, see AK-IM; for a
perspective more oriented toward religious aspects and doctrine, see William C. Chittick,
Sufism: A Short Introduction (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2000).
2 These are Abû Saʿîd b. Aʿrabî’s (d. 340/952) Tabaqât al-nussâq and Abû Bakr
Muhammad b. Dâvûd’s (d. 341/953) Hilyat al-awlîyâʾ; surviving copies have not yet
come to light; see Uludağ and Kara’s remarks in LCH, pp. 17–18 for an overview of the
early mystical biography.
3 For this fifth/eleventh- and sixth/twelfth-century literature, see LCH, pp. 18–21. The
proliferation of biographical notices during this period requires further research; see
L. Massignon and B. Radtke, “Tasavvuf: 1) Early Development in the Arabic and Persian
Lands,” EI2, vol. 10, pp. 313ff.
4 See ch. 10 of John Renard, Friends of God: Islamic Images of Piety, Commitment, and
Servanthood (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008), esp. p. 257.
5 Hans Joachim Kissling, “Aus der Geschichte des Chalvetijje-Ordens,” Zeitschrift der
Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft 103 (1953), 233–89; and Kissling, “Šaʿbân
Velî und die Šaʿbânijje,” in Dissertationes Orientales et Balcanicae Collectae (Munich:
Beiträge zur Kenntnis Südosteuropas und des Nahen Orients, 1986), pp. 99–122.
6 BGM, pp. 275–305; Ernst Bannerth, “La Khalwatiyya en Égypte: Quelques aspects de la
vie d’une confrérie,” Mélanges de l’Institut Dominicain d’Études Orientales du Caire 8
(1964–6), 1–75.
7 See the first half of NC in particular.
8 See MCZ-KZ and MCZ-PP.
9 DTZ.
10 A good example is the recent study of the “second pîr” and root for most Ottoman Halveti
branches, Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî; see MRSY.

Chapter
Early Sufism and The Origins of the

.
Halveti Path, c. 900–1400
The Origins of the Halveti Path, c. 900–1400
Modern historiographical theory leads most contemporary historians to be criti-

cal of origin myths for various Sufi orders that tie them back to revered founding
figures in their respective traditions. Historians recognize that the search for
legitimacy in subsequent periods led all manner of Sufi intellectuals to construct
narratives by which they could link themselves to irrefutable sources of author-
ity for their community. Thus, the Halveti silsile, which all Halveti shaykhs
from the earliest times up to the present would cite as an authoritative document
linking themselves and their doctrines back to the founding figures of Islamic
tradition, might quickly be dismissed by modern historians as having little or no
historical value. At the very least, most historians of the Islamic mystical tradi-
tion now argue that what came to be called Sufism began to form, at the earliest,
only during the second/eighth century, and that the consolidation of Sufi orders
themselves may only have begun centuries after the first Muslims had expanded
out of the Arabian peninsula.1
Be that as it may, historians must also recognize that the Halveti narratives
about their origins maintain a remarkable continuity over time and place when
they did begin to consolidate their narrative histories and set them down in
written form. Whatever lack of historical truth the Halveti silsile embodies for
modern critics, it does not detract from the fact that their narratives about their
foundation and origins were quite meaningful to the Halveti shaykhs and their
followers, and undergirded their claims to religious legitimacy in the context
of the societies they inhabited. This reflects itself most clearly in the fact that
any attempt to understand the historical records they produced often requires a
knowledge of their references to earlier figures and the founding narratives of
the order. Therefore, any jumping-off point for a study of the order must grapple
21

with the way in which its origin myths were constructed, followed by an exami-
nation of the way in which they constructed the chain of authorities responsible
for passing down the mystical secrets of the past to the generations of the present.
This chapter aims to analyze the information that the Halveti silsile provides
us about the origins of the order from the time of its earliest links in the chain of
its authorities up to the emergence of the Timurids in the late eighth/fourteenth
century. The activities of Temür-e Lang and the foundation of his empire mark
a convenient point of division, for they mark a key moment at which the Halveti
order began to build a significant presence in Anatolia and what would later
become the Ottoman domains. However, any attempt to trace the Halveti order’s
foundations in the silsile for the centuries preceding this point are problematic,
in that the process of the formation of Sufi orders was profoundly disrupted and
reoriented by the breakdown of Islamic institutions in the Islamic world wrought
by the Mongol invasions.
Despite these problems, understanding the nebulous origins of the Halveti
order may not be entirely outside of our grasp, thanks to a resourceful son of an
Ottoman janissary and Sufi devotee, Mahmûd Cemâleddîn Hulvî (d. 1054/1654).
In his work entitled Lemezât-ı Hulviye ez lemaʿat-ı ʿulviye (“The Sweet Morsels
from the Exalted Flashes of Light”), he sought to reconstruct a series of narra-
tives and information that documented the historical figures who made up the
Halveti silsile for his contemporaries in the early eleventh/seventeenth century.
The Lemezât represented a twelve-year project undertaken between 1018/1609
and 1030/1621.2 In this work, Hulvî attempted to stitch together a body of anec-
dotes surrounding every figure in the Halveti silsile from its very beginnings to
the most recent shaykh, ʿAdlî Hasan Efendi (d. 1026/1614). Despite his chrono-
logical and contextual distance from his subjects, Hulvî periodically incorporates
interesting narratives that may offer us some clues about the emergence of the
Halveti order from earlier, pre-Mongol Sufi roots.
Before commencing with a study of its contents, however, the historiographi-
cal peculiarities of the work should also be noted. For example, Hulvî imposed
a structural logic on the work that defined the way in which the various figures
in the Halveti silsile were presented and narrated. The structure consisted of
defining each of the figures in the silsile by the term lemze (literally, “morsel
[of food]”). Each lemze was then coupled with three subordinate followers
or helpers, whom Hulvî referred to as zâʾika (literally, “tasters”). Only after
describing these three subordinates did Hulvî move on to the immediate succes-
sor of the previous lemze in the silsile-chain. Thus, Hulvî’s defining structure
for earlier generations of Halveti shaykhs is an artificial one. Matters are com-
plicated by the fact that the work of Hulvî becomes demonstrably unreliable in
places with regard to both content and chronology.3 In sum, we cannot adopt a

The Origins of the Halveti Path, c. 900–1400 23
strategy of mining his narratives directly for factual accounts about figures who
lived in the distant past.
Still, despite the Procrustean implications of his historiographical method
and periodically ahistorical claims, the Lemezât stands alone as our sole Ottoman
source that deals with the lives and activities of many of the earlier figures in
the Halveti silsile. For this reason alone, it must be taken seriously. While Hulvî
undoubtedly incorporated material that reflected the concerns of later Ottoman
Halveti leaders and devotees, he did draw on earlier oral tradition and recorded
accounts that may have preserved some elements of the context that marked
the emergence of the proto-Halveti shaykhs of the medieval and Later Middle
periods.4 When combined with other sources and several recent studies by noted
scholars, we can perhaps hazard a hypothesis, however vague, about the origins
of what would later become the Ottoman Halveti.
Origin myths: the telkîn and silsile foundations of the

.
Halveti order
One of the most important elements among the traditions of the Halveti order
was the telkîn, best defined as “inculcation by oral transmission,” of the founda-
tion narrative for the origins of Halveti practice and doctrine, followed by the sil-
sile’s chain of mystical authorities, through whom the means for teaching these
secrets had passed from the earliest times up to the present. One of the earliest
preserved Ottoman records of this narrative appears in the Tezkîretüʾl-Halvetiye
of Sinâneddîn Yûsuf b. Yaʿkûb el-Germiyânî (d. 989/1581), a work in which the
author sought to explain to the Ottoman sultan, Murad III, how the order came to
originate and spread throughout the Ottoman domains. In this work, Sinâneddîn
translates from Arabic the conversation that marked the first transmission of the
Halveti path from the Prophet to his son-in-law and future caliph ʿAlî:
. . . One day, ʿAlî b. Abî Tâlib (R.A.) came into the presence of the Prophet
Muhammad (S.A.S.) and said [in Arabic]: “Guide me to the closest of paths to
God Most High, and the most virtuous of them before God, and the easiest of
them in regard to the worship of God” . . . The exalted [Prophet Muhammad]
said: “What prophecy has bestowed upon me is [an action] incumbent upon you”
. . . As soon as ʿAlî asked what type of action [it was], the exalted [Prophet]
said: “It is perseverance in the remembrance of God in solitude.” ʿAlî said: “Is
the benefit of remembrance excellent in this way, for all people are those who
recall?” . . . [The Prophet] said: “O ʿAlî, while there is a man on the face of the
earth saying ‘Allah, Allah’ the Day of Judgment will not come.” ʿAlî said: “O
Messenger of God, then by what means is it necessary to make the remembrance

(dhikr), [to] let it be acceptable, tell me the information (talqîn)?” [The Prophet]
said: “Close your eyes and be silent, until I recite three times, you listen, then
afterwards you also recite, let me tell you.” So he closed his kohl-tinged eyes to
the two worlds and said “there is no god save God” in a loud and drawn out voice,
beginning with a negation three times from the right side, and finishing with an
affirmation from the left side. ʿAlî was silent and listened. Then he said, “there is
no god save God” three times according to this practice. The most noble Prophet
spoke and confirmed [it], saying “the trustee [angel] Gabriel taught it to me also
according to this practice by the command of the Lord of the Two Worlds.” ʿAlî
did not neglect the process of struggle as the days and nights passed, and he was
guided to so many spiritual advancements and sublime manifestations that the
world of spirits was opened with an opening of openings, and he began to see
that which they did not see, and know that which they did not know; he came to
that which no eye saw, and no ear heard, and not entered the heart of any human
being.5
This narrative establishes the basic practice of the Halveti zikr as drawing on the
same sources of authority as did prophecy, in that it was brought by the angel
Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad. It also set the stage for the basic relation-
ship between a teacher (the Prophet) and his follower (his son-in-law ʿAlî).
Moreover, as all Muslims knew, the Prophet Muhammad had his first encounter
with the angel Gabriel and the text of the Qurʾan in the cave on the mountain of
Hirâʾ in Mecca, so the narrative would have had a powerful ring of authenticity
to its audience.
Leaving aside our obvious inability to corroborate this narrative to the time
of the Prophet Muhammad, further investigation shows that this narrative has
deep historical roots. Later Ottoman Halveti authors like Sinâneddîn Yûsuf and
Mahmûd Cemâleddîn Hulvî were not the first to advance this origin mythol-
ogy and its accompanying silsile; it first appears in the text of a treatise on the
zikr written by Shihâb al-Dîn Abû Hafs ʿUmar b. Muhammad al-Suhrawardî
(d. 632/1234), who credits his paternal uncle Abûʾl-Najîb ʿAbd al-Qâhir al-
Suhrawardî (d. 563/1168) with teaching it to him via a chain of authorities
stretching back to the foundational mystic, Junayd al-Baghdâdî (d. 297/910).6
While the narrative does not contain references to the later practices and tech-
niques of the order in any detail, its connection to the historically verifiable
Suhrawardî family is worthy of note.
We will return to that connection momentarily, but to return to the narrative
of the telkîn, at the point when it was completed the Halveti shaykh reciting it
would then teach the chain of authorities linking himself back to this founda-
tional point. This was the silsile that, by Ottoman times, had come to document

the means by which Halveti teachings had been passed down over the centuries.
By the tenth/sixteenth century, this list of successive masters and followers came
to maintain a general level of consistency across the various branches that made
up the Ottoman Halveti order. Halveti devotees came to unify around this line of
descent as expressed from the time of the Prophet Muhammad up until sometime
between the eighth/fourteenth and ninth/fifteenth century.
Yet what, if anything, can the earliest links of this silsile tell us about the
origins of the Halveti? The earliest links in the chain suggest little grounds for
optimism in being able to locate Halveti origins in the early medieval period.
The first seven shaykhs in the chain were composed of a number of well-attested
historical figures from the formative centuries of Islam. Once the teaching had
passed from ʿAlî b. Abû Tâlib to his sons, Hasan and Husayn, the chain begins
with the noted early Muslim preacher and proto-Sufi figure of Hasan al-Basrî
(d. 110/728). The inclusion of Hasan is hardly unique to the Halveti, as many
other Sufi silsiles had built spurious genealogies linking back to this foundational
figure in early Islamic history in a process that began as early as the fourth/tenth
century CE.7 From there, the teaching passed to Habîb al-ʿAjamî (d. 130/748)
and Davûd al-Tâʾî (d. 165/782), a contemporary of Abû Hanîfa (d. 150/767) who
was one of the founders of the four schools of Sunnî Islamic law.8 However, at
this point some Halveti shaykhs also offered an alternative chain of transmis-
sion that passed down from ʿAlî’s son, Husayn, through what would become
the major Shiʿî imâms, including Zayn al-ʿÂbidîn (d. 95/713), Muhammad al-
Bâqir (d. 114/732), and Jaʿfar al-Sadîq (d. 148/765). Both chains of transmission
culminated in the figure of Maʿrûf al-Karkhî (d. 200/815), a noted practitioner
of renunciant ideals. The inclusion of the alternate imamate chain, both here
and in other Sufi contexts, suggested to some scholars that there was an inher-
ent interplay between Shiʿism and Sufism during the latter’s formative phases.
However, more recent studies have demonstrated that the appropriation of the
imams by Shiʿism did not preclude their being venerated figures in the Sunnî
tradition also. In the end, the inclusion of the six imams of the Shiʿite tradition in
the constructed identity of the Halveti silsile need not be taken as decisive proof
of crypto-Shiʿism.9
The next three figures in the chain, Sarî al-Saqatî (d. 253/867), his nephew,
Junayd al-Baghdâdî, and Mamshâd al-Dinâwarî (d. 299/912) are also recogniz-
able as important parts of the history of classical Sufism. Both Sarî al-Saqatî
and Junayd were important figures in developing Sufi doctrines based on
sobriety; often articulated in opposition to the more ecstatic versions of Islamic
mysticism pioneered by figures such as Bayâzid al-Bistâmî (d. 261/875) and
Mansûr al-Hallâj (d. 309/922).10 Mamshâd al-Dinâwarî, for his part, remains
a pivotal eponymous figure for the origins of the Chistiyya order of the Indian

subcontinent. However, it should be noted that other prominent Sufi silsiles
that employ this “golden chain” of authorities stretching from Hasan al-Basrî to
Junayd tend to diverge into different personalities rather than Mamshâd from this
point forward.11 This leaves the historian to conclude that the formative period
of the Halveti silsile, up to the deaths of Junayd and Mamshâd by the end of the
third/ninth century, had appropriated earlier constructions of mystical legitimacy
claiming to document the transmission of mystical teaching through a noted
group of early religious figures.
Once the recognizable figure of Mamshâd al-Dinâwarî appears, however, the
Halveti silsile diverges from the generally accepted structures of early Sufism.
and takes a more unique form by embracing a more obscure figure, referred to as
either Ahmad al-Aswad al-Dinâwarî, Abû ʿAbdullah al-Dinâwarî, Muhammad
al-Kurdî, or Muhammad al-Dinâwarî (d. 370/980?), depending on which source
is consulted.12 At this point, yawning chronological gaps open up in the chain
of transmitters, as the next link in the chain, Qâdî Wajîh al-DinʿUmar al-
Suhrawardî (d. 532/1137), was not born until 455/1063.13 Only with the appear-
ance of Qâdî Wajîh al-Dîn do we reach a figure that can be clearly documented
and corroborated by multiple sources as a jurist and transmitter of Prophetic
traditions, although we receive only fragmentary information beyond those basic
attributes. He may have received the title of “judge” (qâdî) for serving in that
office in his home town of Suhraward; he later moved to Baghdad, where he was
appointed as a director of a Sufi convent by one of the caliph’s mamlûks.14 After
this, there is an intervening link in some Halveti silsiles through the otherwise
obscure figure of ʿUmar al-Bakrî, about whom we know almost nothing save that
he may have gone on the pilgrimage with Wajîh al-Dîn.15 Despite the vagaries,
however, at this point a substantial amount of circumstantial evidence links the
foundations of the Halvetî Sufi order to the activities of the prominent Baghdad-
based scholars of the Suhrawardî family who, as the figure of Wajîh al-Dîn sug-
gests, fused together elements of religious scholarship, jurisprudence and Sufi
mysticism as part of their careers.
By the time we reach the next figure in the chain, Abûʾl-Najîb ʿAbd al-
Qâhir al-Suhrawardî, another critical foundation point in the history of Sufism
become apparent. Known as the author of the Kitâb âdâb al-murîdîn (“Book of
the Etiquette of Sufi Novices”), Abûʾl-Najîb’s sole written work marked the cul-
mination of a series of writings that had aimed to develop a Sufi pedagogy from
the third/ninth century onward. It also heralded a new beginning, in that these
teachings would be extended to a much wider circle of followers as Sufi orders
became more formalized.16 Hulvî’s greater familiarity with figures from this
period, based on sources well known to later Muslim thinkers, becomes evident
in the biographical entry on Abûʾl-Najîb. In addition to noting his authorship of

the work on Sufi etiquette, Hulvî gave Abûʾl-Najîb’s alternate silsile “accord-
ing to another viewpoint,” which ran through Ahmad al-Ghazâlî (d. 520/1126),
brother of the influential polymath, Abû Hâmid al-Ghazâlî (d. 505/1111), devi-
ating somewhat from the later standard Halveti silsile. This “alternate” chain is
identical to the silsile personally expressed by the noted Sufi leader ʿUmar al-
Suhrawardî in one of his works.17 Both lines ultimately terminated in the figure
of Junayd al-Baghdâdî, so for later Halveti thinkers there was no possibility of
undermining Halveti legitimacy by recognizing multiple possibilities for the
transmission of knowledge. Hulvî also drew on additional sources, such as ʿAbd
al-Rahman Jâmî’s hagiographical compilation, Nafahât al-Uns, for a narrative
about Abûʾl-Najîb’s encounter with a butcher who was forced to repent after the
uncanonically slaughtered animals in his shop spoke to the shaykh to condemn
his behavior.18 In addition, potential echoes of Abûʾl-Najîb’s strained relations
with the caliphate might be read into a second narrative that told of a hostile
encounter between the soldiers of a local governor and the shaykh while he was
visiting a village.19
Yet despite these appropriations of key elements of the later medieval
Suhrawardiyya tradition, Abûʾl-Najîb’s more illustrious and ambitious nephew,
Abû Hafs ʿUmar al-Suhrawardî, played only a bit part in Hulvî’s construction
of the Halveti silsile. Moreover, Hulvî was remarkably ill-informed about his
history. For one thing, he incorrectly claimed that ʿUmar had died as a martyr
fighting against the Mongols at the siege of Baghdad in 656/1258. In so doing,
Hulvî tied his biography to a narrative about how ʿUmar had predicted the
defeat of the last ʿAbbâsid caliph based on God’s anger at his inability to come
to a peace agreement with the Khwârizm Shah ʿAlâʾ al-Dîn Muhammad (d.
617/1220). This prediction drew on the idea that God was punishing the Muslim
rulers of the day for defying Sufis like himself, who had tried to broker a peace-
ful accord. While elements of these tales reflect an actual mission that ʿUmar
al-Suhrawardî undertook to try and broker a peace between the caliph al-Nâsir
li-Dîn Allah (d. 622/1225) and the Khwârizm Shah in 614/1217, it is difficult to
understand why Hulvî did not follow the more correct information in sources
like Jâmî’s Nafahât al-Uns, which we know was readily available to him.20
The central role of the Mongols in this narrative, however, raises an important
point in its own right. Hulvî wrongly described the next shaykh in the Halveti
silsile, Qutb al-Dîn Abû Bakr b. Ahmad b. Muhammad al-Abharî (d. 577/1181),
as having died during the time when the Khwârazm Shah had been forced to flee
from the Mongol invasions. Moreover, Hulvî described one of his followers, the
otherwise obscure Rukn al-Dîn al-Kirmânî (d. 656/1258), as having supposedly
died during the sack of Tabriz at the time of Hulagu’s invasion and destruction
of the ʿAbbâsid caliphate.21 This foreshadowing of what was to come would

obscure the history of the Halveti order in a number of ways, for the coming of
the Mongols from the second decade of the seventh/thirteenth century onward
would complete a process that decentralized and detached the last of the older
Islamic institutions of the classical period from their foundations. This would
lead to an upsurge in local religious leaders and regional figures grappling with a
predominantly nomadic power structure, whose activities would characterize the
environment from which the Halveti order would later emerge.
At this stage, circumstantial evidence might suggest that the Halveti order
originated and grew out of a period in which the first Sufi orders were consolidat-
ing into broad-based groups in the last years of the ʿAbbâsid caliphate. This is
not to say that this general hypothesis about Halveti origins is untrue. The basic
framework of the Halveti telkîn and silsile drew on models pioneered by the
emerging groups that would later come to represent the Suhrawardiyya order,
even if the links back to them are garbled. Moreover, given the active program
of spreading the teachings of the order during the time of the ʿAbbâsid caliph
al-Nâsir, hazarding an educated guess that the foundations of the Halveti order
might be found in the various offshoots of the Suhrawardiyya tradition makes
sense.
Still, we should not be too quick to assume that the founding principles of the
Halveti are a direct result of a process of evolution grounded in the projects of the
seventh/thirteenth-century Suhrawardiyya. Since the works of various members
of the Suhrawardiyya were well-known and respected by Ottoman times, Hulvî
and his informants may well have simply laid claim to them by constructing
their silsile in such a way that it could draw on those elements. It is important to
keep in mind that by Ottoman times, both Halveti and non-Halveti authors could
draw upon a deep reservoir of literature about the formative figures in Islamic
mysticism, and intersect elements from multiple sources into their accounts.
Thus, Ottoman authors’ accounts of key figures in the Halveti silsile can bear
a strong resemblance to ideas and accounts that predate the Ottoman period by
centuries.22
.
The Halveti “Dark Ages”: constructing identities in a post-
Mongol world
It is a recognized irony in the historical study of many regions of the world

that the medieval or “middle” periods of their civilizations are more poorly
understood than their earlier, formative periods, in part because they have
either been neglected or lack a substantial source base. In the case of what is
sometimes called the “Later Middle Period” of Islamic history, dating from
about the time of the seventh/thirteenth century up to the beginning of the tenth/

sixteenth century, this gap is especially acute.23 The history of the emergence
of the Halveti order out of this period is therefore difficult to track. While we
can construct some of the origin points for the doctrines and silsile chains of the
later Ottoman Halveti out of the foundational materials that accompanied the
activities of the Suhrawardiyya, the question of how these elements came to be
incorporated into Ottoman Sufi historiography is somewhat more murky. So the
second challenge will be to examine what, if anything, can be drawn from Hulvî
and other sources about the Mongol and post-Mongol age in which the earliest
recognizable Halveti shaykhs emerged.
While the Ottomans could draw on a number of hagiographical and bio-
graphical sources for information about mystical figures from earlier periods,
few of those sources had attempted to compile a full account of all the figures
in the Halveti silsile into a single record before Hulvî took up the task. Bits and
pieces did emerge in at least one source, in the form of an Ottoman follower of a
Nakşbendî shaykh based in Bursa, Lâmiʿî Çelebi (d. 938/1532). Lâmiʿî is a criti-
cal figure, in that his grandfather Nakkâş ʿAlî Paşa had apparently been deported
to Samarqand by Timur and spent a number of years there before returning. As
a result, Lâmiʿî developed relationships with prominent figures based in the
eastern Islamic world, which allowed him to both translate and expand the ninth/
fifteenth-century hagiographical compilation of the Timurid author ʿAbd al-
Rahman Jâmî (d. 898/1492). This work, following Jâmî’s, took the title Nafahat
al-uns min hadarât al-quds, and was completed in 927/1521.24
Lâmiʿî’s importance for the historian of the Halveti order comes via a
series of disconnected discussions about various early Halveti shaykhs that he
appended to Jâmî’s work. These explanations of early Middle Period Halveti
shaykhs offer valuable but confusing clues about the order’s origins. Jâmî
himself had encountered or heard of some of the earliest Halvetis, but his bio-
graphical sketches are brief, as he was more interested in other Sufi branches
and personalities of the time. Lâmiʿî, on the other hand, who was more aware of
the subsequent growth and spread of the Halveti order in his own context, felt
obliged to contribute additional information about them. He first offered a con-
cluding remark at the end of his translation of one of Jâmî’s entries on an early
Halveti figure, Zâhirüddîn Halvetî (d. 800/1398), and says:
[A]ccording to what I heard from the great ones who lived in Herat, these afore-
mentioned Halvetî shaykhs [like Zâhirüddîn] are not the Halvetî shaykhs which
in our time are well-known in the area of Şirvân and Anatolia. The exalted silsile
of these aforementioned shaykhs derives from Shaykh Rükneddîn ʿAlâüddevle
Simnânî. As for the silsiles of those which are famed among us, they go back to
İbrâhîm Zâhid Gîlânî.25

In making these claims, Lâmiʿî raises the intriguing possibility that the Sufi
order that came to be known under the moniker of “Halveti” may not have been
a unified group during the post-Mongol Middle Period. The only thing that
Rükneddîn ʿAlâüddevle Simnânî (d. 736/1336) and İbrâhîm Zâhid Gîlânî (d.
705/1305) appeared to have in common was their ties to the Mongol Ilkhanid
state under whose rule they lived and worked.26 Since we know that the majority
of Halveti shaykhs that Lâmiʿî tied back to Rükneddîn ʿAlâüddevle later settled
in the area of Herat and other Timurid regions, this otherwise obscure note sug-
gests that the Halveti order may have consisted of both a “western” Ottoman
branch and an “eastern” Timurid one that developed and operated in separate
spheres from one another.
It is therefore unfortunate for the historian that Lâmiʿî Çelebi went on to
undermine his own claims by subsequently appending a continuation of the
Halveti shaykhs going back to the figure of Hacı İzzeddîn-i Türkmânî (d.
828/1425). Lâmiʿî had little to say about Hacı İzzeddîn himself, save that a
pomegranate tree supposedly grew near his grave that had curative powers. But
Lâmiʿî took the opportunity raised by his discussion of Hacı İzzeddîn to append
our earliest known silsile of the Halveti shaykhs of the Middle Period, which he
described as follows:
Hacı İzzeddîn’s shaykh and chain of authorities for the order are as follows:
Hacı İzzeddînSAkhî Mîrem HalvetîSPîr ʿÖmer HalvetîSAkhî Muhammad
HalvetîSİbrâhîm Zâhid Gîlânî. They say that the traversing of the path via the
seven names has been around since [the time of] İbrâhîm Gîlânî. His shaykh
in turn was Cemâleddîn Tebrizî. The prominent Nakşbendî shaykh Uzun
Muslihuddîn Halife organized the Halvetî shaykhs this way in the [work enti-
tled] Şecere-i Silsile-i Meşâyih, and recorded that Zâhirüddîn Halvetî’s shaykh
Seyfeddîn Halvetî, his bond [of attachment] was to Pîr ʿÖmer Halvetî.27
Thus, within the space of a single entry, Lâmiʿî Çelebi contradicted his former
claim that the two branches of the Halveti order were separate! Instead, he
weaves the shaykhs of the two posited branches of the Halveti back together
again, with both lines claiming an intersecting line of descent from figures shared
in common. It may have been that when Lâmiʿî was putting together his work, he
ended up with two separate narratives or sources about the early Halveti shaykhs,
and simply recorded both of them without recognizing the subsequent need for
editing to resolve the contradiction. Still, Lâmiʿî did recognize a need among his
contemporary audience for this information, and went on to recount a number
of important ninth/fifteenth-century Halveti shaykhs up to the time of Cemâl
el-Halvetî. Cemâl was responsible for definitively establishing the order in the

Ottoman capital after the accession of Bayezid II to the throne in 887/1481, and
would have been a figure prominent in living memory at the time that Lâmiʿî was
completing his work. A desire to construct an explanatory mechanism for the
rise of the Halveti order in the Ottoman capital in recent memory may have led
Lâmiʿî to seek information that inadvertently contradicted his first impression
about their history.
Luckily, this impasse can be broken via other means, for the problem of
the “eastern Halveti” and its origins has recently been taken up in an article by
Devin DeWeese.28 In it, he argues convincingly for the fascinating proposition
that the early Halveti shaykhs of Iran, the ʿIshqî shaykhs of Central Asia, and
the later Shattârî shaykhs of the Indian subcontinent all appear to have emerged
out of a common context, which included narratives that overlapped around the
figure of a mysterious Muhammad el-Halvetî (d. 751/1350).29 Muhammad el-
Halvetî was a murky figure at best, aside from a curious reference that he was
among the descendants of the noted Shaykh Ahmed-i Jâm (d. 535/1141). In fact,
a number of the references to Muhammad el-Halvetî that appear in the sources
DeWeese consulted, especially those tied to the emerging Nakşbendî groups,
came to express hostility to him because Muhammad was an advocate of a vocal
form of dhikr. Notably, one of the narratives suggests a tantalizing link to the
later Halveti practice of using tambourines as a component in their semâʿ and
devrân ceremonies. The narrative, told from a hostile point of view, stated that
Muhammad was given a tambourine as a gift by Central Asian shaykh who dis-
approved of his spiritual practices. The shaykh in question intended to demean
Muhammad’s spiritual aptitude, because the tambourine gathered “followers
of defective mind” and that “children and slave girls and madmen gather at the
sound.”30
DeWeese’s painstaking reconstructions of the various silsile construction
activity of the various Sufi groups of Iran, Central Asia, and the Indian subconti-
nent offers a potential hypothesis that allows for a resolution of Lâmiʿî Çelebi’s
contradictory discussion about “eastern” and “western” branches of the Halveti
order. Muhammad’s clearly articulated position in the silsile of the “western”
Halveti tradition in multiple Ottoman sources suggests that the memory of
Muhammad el-Halvetî, just as with the “eastern” silsiles, proved to be an equally
malleable point of reference around which the “western” silsile could build itself.
DeWeese himself suggests that the specifically “western” Halvetî silsile’s inclu-
sion of İbrâhîm Zâhid Gîlânî may point to the competition of later Halveti silsile
builders with emerging Safavid order devotees. He deduces this from the sil-
sile’s inclusion of the figure of İbrâhîm, whom both Muhammad el-Halvetî and
Safî al-Dîn Ardabilî (d. 735/1334), the founder of what would later become the
Safavid order, supposedly shared as a common teacher.31 Ironically, this would

come to be a liability for the Ottoman Halveti in later centuries, as the conver-
sion of the Safavid order’s descendants to state-sponsored Shiʿism after the rise
of Shah İsmâʿîl I made these links a source of suspicion.
DeWeese’s recent work suggests that what we can know about the origins
of the various early figures of the Halveti order is nebulous, which is part of the
reason why later historiographies about the various silsiles that drew on that
legacy branched off in different directions. The various figures who came to take
the name “Halveti,” DeWeese argues, are best described as groups who appealed
to their audience through practices that could achieve rapid spiritual advance-
ment. This was why the names of these orders – such as the Halveti (meaning,
those who withdraw into isolation in cells for mystical reflection) – reflected a
practice or spiritual method rather than being named after an eponymous figure.32
DeWeese’s article thus offers up the frustrating possibility that even our
earliest mentions of the Ottoman Halveti silsile are, to a great extent, ahistorical
and constructed texts insofar as they precede the points in the historical record
where their process of construction comes into view among later generations.
Nevertheless, he also leaves open the intriguing possibility that these narratives
did draw on a common point of reference in the figure of Muhammad el-Halvetî
who, however nebulously defined, had existed previous to the process of silsile
construction. For later generations, Muhammad acquired overwhelming impor-
tance and was reworked to fit later ideological concerns about a given order’s
legitimacy. Unfortunately, most Ottoman sources are far less detailed than those
provided by “eastern” Halveti offshoots during this early period. Lâmiʿî Çelebi
excepted, Ottoman records of the Halveti silsile are frustratingly vague about
the people and events that preceded the appearance of Cemâl el-Halvetî, who
was the founding figure for the Ottoman Halveti. The silsile in most Halveti
hagiographies was provided in Ottoman sources, but it was also passed over as
something self-evident, with no attention or narrative being given to any but its
most recent members. That is, until Hulvî took up his pen in 1018/1609.
The question then becomes whether or not Hulvî’s work can offer us any
insight on the following points: (1) does it preserve anything useful about
the figures who made up the silsile between the period marked by the rise of
the Suhrawardî family’s project and the rise of historically attested figures from the
ninth/fifteenth century?; (2) does it offer us any understanding at all about how
these early Halveti figures might have related to the turbulent historical context of
the post-Mongol world?; and (3) can it resolve the question of how to disentangle
the eponymous figures of ʿÖmer el-Halvetî and Muhammad el-Halvetî, who are
each credited with giving rise to a “Halvetî order” of some kind? To tackle these
questions, we must first reconstruct Hulvî’s silsile of the Halveti order from the
period of its Suhrawardî origins up to the mid-ninth/fifteenth century. Table 1 in

Appendix I summarizes what Hulvî provides us in the way of basic information
about the lives and geographical contexts of each of the shaykhs in the silsile.
An examination of the shaykhs included in Hulvî’s work suggests several
points. First of all, some of the earlier seventh/thirteenth-century parts of the silsile
have a strong air of the spurious about them. Figures like the executed Shihâb
al-Dîn Yahyâ al-Suhrawardî, of Illuminationist philosophical fame, appear as
followers of Rükneddîn Sincâsî, a supposed contemporary of Ibn al-ʿArabî.
Moreover, some of the critical figures in the origins of the Mevlevî Sufi order,
like Shams al-Dîn al-Tabrizî, noted companion of the order’s founder, Mevlânâ
Celâlüddîn Rûmî, are also present. Most strikingly, however, is the inclusion of
figures like Kutbüddîn Ebherî, Rükneddîn Sincâsî, and Evhadüddîn-i Kirmânî,
each of whom were associated with the spread of the Suhrawardiyya order.
We also see mention of figures like İbrâhîm-i Hemedanî el-Irakî (also known
as Fakhr al-Dîn ʿIraqî (d. 688/1289) and Hüseyin-i Saʿdâd (d. c. 718/1318),
who are tied to another first-generation Suhrawardiyya shaykh, Bahâʾ al-Dîn
Zakariyya Multanî (d. 661/1262). This line of Suhrawardiyya shaykhs were tied
to the expansion of the order’s teachings in the Indian subcontinent.33
This strongly suggests a process of integration, in which later generations
of Halveti Sufis like Hulvî and his mentors were working to bond their legacy
together with that of other prominent and accepted Sufi figures representative
of an earlier, pre-Ottoman past that Ottomans themselves had come to revere.
Moreover, the wide gaps between the death dates of Rükneddîn Sincâsî
(d. 628/1231) and his successors, Şahâbüddîn-i Tebrizî (d. 702/1302) and
Cemâleddîn-i Ezherî (d. 760/1358), followed by an extraordinarily jump back-
wards in time to İbrâhîm Zâhid Gîlânî, suggest an ahistorical construction. It
corroborates DeWeese’s argument that the process of silsile construction based
around eponymous figures emerged out of a later historical context of legitimiza-
tion for Sufi orders.
Curiously, Hulvî himself challenges the validity of this type of dating for
other parts of the Halveti silsile as laid out in the Lemezât. When discussing the
figure of Seyfeddîn el-Halvetî (d. 813/1410), a follower of the Halveti founder
Pîr ʿÖmer el-Halvetî (d. 800/1397), Hulvî says: “Although Mevlânâ [ʿAbd al-
Rahman] Jâmî indicated a death date of 763/1362 in his work entitled Nefahât
al-Uns, in that case, it is necessary that Pîr ʿÖmer have died before Shaykh
Muhammad [el-Halvetî]. So it is against these historical facts.”34 Hulvî’s sub-
sequent expression of historical awareness in this subsequent case makes his
omission with regard to the earlier parts of the Halveti silsile all the more glaring.
Given this obvious set of difficulties, the scholar is on fairly safe ground in
asserting that the institutional memory of how the Halveti order linked back to
the teachings from the earlier Suhrawardî period had been considerably obscured

by the time Hulvî set about compiling his work. He either could not or did not
note the discrepancies involved in the silsile’s construction, most likely due to a
lack of historical resources by which he could resolve them.
The hypothesis that holds the origins of the “western Halveti” silsile to be
the product of ex post facto construction by later generations receives similar
corroboration from the equally sketchy position of İbrâhîm Zâhid in the silsile.
Hulvî posits Muhammad el-Halvetî, whom he recorded as dying in 780/1378,
as the successor of İbrâhîm Zâhid. To explain how the two shaykhs connected
with each other, Hulvî states only that “[Muhammad] was born in the region of
Khwârazm and grew up there; while he was among the most prominent scholars
of the community, he pledged his allegiance [to İbrâhîm Zâhid] by means of
a dream, and was with the Shaykh in Gilan. After that he came with the suc-
cessorship to Khwârizm and settled there. After that he came to Herat (Herî).”
He then expands on a narrative extracted from Jâmî’s Nefahât al-Uns about
Muhammad’s use of the vocal dhikr, whose echoes could be heard some three
farsakhs away, but without giving a clear origin for the subsequent elaboration:
They asked him: What a strange matter! Your voice for recitation of prayers is
invariably neither farther or nearer than three farsakhs . . . He replied: Shaykh
Zâhid one evening, while conversing with his wife, in the middle of the con-
versation his wife asked, “when you pass on, who will be the heir apparent and
holder of the position . . .? This much is clear: it will be one of your sons.” When
she said this, he said: “O wife, if you want to know this answer, now everyone
is lying in their bed in the world of dreams and sleeping. Come now, let’s call
out to each one of them clearly, whichever youth hears our call and replies, it is
assigned to him . . .” He must have first recalled all of the dervishes from among
the children and successors and called each of them by name, and awaited a reply
accepting his call. Each time, no reply came; no awake person was among the
people of inner consciousness. Finally, he addressed this well-wisher also. The
first time I was sunk in ecstatic contemplation and brought myself to a sober
state. Upon his second call, I heard it in garbled form. Upon the third, I responded
saying “I am here” (lebbeyk). I waited on his reply and realized I was in a place
three farsakhs distant.35
The narratives suggest a certain tension in the initiation of Muhammad el-Halvetî

as a follower (alternate interpretations might suggest it is a reworking of a more
hostile narrative suggesting that he failed a test imposed by his shaykh!). It also
suggests a need to explain issues of both distance and the origin of the vocal
dhikr that captured the attention of many of Muhammad el-Halvetî’s contem-
poraries – Jâmî had made a reference to it in his Nafahât al-Uns, for instance.36

Aside from these curious and uncorroborated accounts, we receive little further
detail on the matter of Muhammad el-Halvetî’s relationship with his ostensible
master. Hulvî concludes his biography with a long story about how the shaykh
helped a local man salvage his marriage, and then by locating the shaykh’s death
and tomb in the Gazergâh cemetery in Herat, which was the site of a Halveti
graveyard.37 So once again, up to the appearance of Muhammad el-Halvetî in the
historical record, the connections in the western Halveti silsile seem problematic.
The question now shifts to whether or not Muhammad el-Halvetî can be
esteemed as a decisive figure for the western branch of the Halveti. To approach
this question, we need to examine Hulvî’s biography of the nominal founder of
the Ottoman branches of the Halveti order, Pîr ʿÖmer el-Halvetî, which is the
most extensive record discovered so far and includes an unusual level of detail.
Hulvî claims that ʿÖmer was the child of a brother of Muhammad el-Halvetî, and
that his family resided in the town of Lahîcân, which is a town in the province of
Gilan a short distance from the southern shore of the Caspian Sea.38 But a more
interesting contribution is the narrative on how ʿÖmer came to become a Sufi in
the first place, which Hulvî relates as follows:
In his youth, he became enthusiastic about being a cavalryman for a while, he

loved being a soldier and joined the gâzis to make war upon the unbelievers.
While involved in conflict and war for many long years in this way, he partici-
pated in a campaign together with Çoban Girây Hân of the family of Chingîz
(Hân)39 who was the ruler of the time. But while passing by a place, they were
unexpectedly attacked. When their army, defeated and crushed, disintegrated and
fled, ʿÖmer Efendi also fled, spurring his horse in a direction out of fear for his
life. But he ran into a group of bandits by chance. As soon as they saw ʿÖmer
Efendi, they said “hey, aren’t you Çoban Shah’s market-inspector (muhtesib)?”
They crowded around him in the hope of finding money, and wanted to kill him.
ʿÖmer Efendi, while in this grave situation and condition, reached out for the
help of the secret of his forefathers, who said to him with a spiritual sign, “will
you enter the [Sufi] path, or will you give up your head on this road?” ʿÖmer
Efendi, with tears of regret, became a seeker of the path from [the depths of]
heart and soul.40
This narrative takes a sharp turn from the vagueness that marked earlier members
of the Halveti silsile up to this point, as the narrative can help date a part of ʿÖmer
el-Halvetî’s early life. We learn that ʿÖmer el-Halvetî took up an official post
in the final years of the Mongol Ilkhanid state, and from the anecdote, it appears
that he probably suffered from its growing weakness during the reign of the last
Ilkhanid ruler, Abu Saʿîd (r. 716/1316–736/1335). It is also highly likely that the

Çoban Shah referred to in the narrative is Amîr Çoban (d. 728/1327), who had
been a prominent general and statesman under multiple Ilkhanid rulers, having
fought in his first battle as early as 688/1289. We know that his power reached
its apogee at the time of Abu Saʿîd’s rule, and that his influence even reached a
point where he could challenge the power of the ruler. Ilkhanid concerns about
his disobedience to the ruling house eventually led to his downfall.41
The defeat mentioned in this narrative strongly implies that ʿÖmer made
his break with the Ilkhanids probably at the point when Amîr Çoban’s power
was collapsing during the mid-1320s. As we know that İbrâhîm Zâhid and his
descendants had ties to the Ilkhanid state, and had been given land and sources
of vakıf revenue as a result, we might hypothesize that ʿÖmer’s family also had
connections with his order and the Ilkhanids.42 Therefore, the idea of a “western
Halveti” grounded in the figure of İbrâhîm Zâhid, however inchoate, seems
possible. But this still leaves open a critical question: how could Hulvî claim
that ʿÖmer had also come to be associated with Muhammad el-Halvetî and the
shaykhs of the “eastern” branch?
Hulvî continues his narrative of ʿÖmer’s mystical conversion by telling of
his miraculous escape from the bandits. At the moment they were about to seize
him, one of them suddenly fell off his horse and died on the spot, and in terror,
the remainder fled the scene. Having lost his horse, ʿÖmer walked a full day and
night until a town appeared before him:
While coming and going among the orchards of the city, he encountered Shaykh
Muhammad at that moment on account of his going out for a morning journey
together with his friends. ʿÖmer was attracted to the shaykh, and pledging his
allegiance to him, threw off his military garb that he was wearing and donned the
garb of a dervish. Shaykh Muhammad said to Pîr ʿÖmer, “praise be to God; he
bound you to us, we also bind you to the people of sainthood,” and commended
him to utmost exertion and discipline.
Interestingly, we know that Amîr Çoban suffered his final defeat somewhere
between Rayy and Herat; he retreated to the latter shortly before his capture and
execution. Might this narrative allow us to fix a potential meeting between ʿÖmer
el-Halvetî and Muhammad el-Halvetî in 728/1327, at the point when ʿÖmer
staggered back into Herat after the decisive and final defeat of his patron, Amîr
Çoban? The evidence, circumstantial though it may be, makes this interpretation
possible. Moreover, this suggests another potential problem with the Halveti
silsile, given the difficulty of finding viable links between Muhammad el-Halvetî
and İbrâhîm Zâhid. Perhaps ʿÖmer el-Halvetî, having grown up as a scion of
a family with ties to the family of İbrâhîm Zâhid, had also attached himself at

some point to the charismatic, Herat-based shaykh Muhammad as well. After all,
when we leave aside the concerns of later silsile builders concerned about chains
of transmission, the Sufis of ʿÖmer and Muhammad’s time would have seen
nothing wrong with this pattern of multiple associations. Could the later Halveti
traditionists and biographers, whom Hulvî subsequently channeled in compiling
his own work, attempted to harmonize this otherwise discordant step away from
İbrâhîm Zâhid’s tradition by “adopting” the outsider, Muhammad el-Halvetî, as
a linking figure in the Zâhidiyya legacy?
Hulvî continued his narrative by describing ʿÖmer el-Halvetî’s character as
a mystic once he had converted to Sufism:
According to what is related, Pîr ʿÖmer struggled to such a degree that no one
before that had done it as much as him. When he completed the path, and was
given a prayer [of blessing], he did not accept giving guidance and went to the
mountains. He settled in the hollow of a tree in isolation from people. He made it
into a cell and entered into the forty-day retreat. Our noble one Necmeddîn Hasan
Efendi used to say that he did forty [of these] forty-day retreats back-to-back,
and that the [Halveti] headgear was reformed by means of indication of the dâl
cap with forty pleats [in it] from the secret of the most noble Messenger, peace
be upon him.43
The narrative of taking up residence in the hollow of a tree would later become
central to the historical understanding of the branches of the Ottoman Halveti
order. One popular offshoot described how when Pîr ʿÖmer departed from his
retreat in its hollow, the tree would try to uproot itself and follow him while
making loud noises.44 Moreover, Hulvî, citing his first shaykh Necmeddîn Hasan
Efendi (d. 1019/1611), also credits him with the creation of a form of headgear
that would come to define the Halveti as an order which was based on the prac-
tice of the forty-day retreat.
According to Hulvî, Pîr ʿÖmer was eventually sent by Muhammad to the
mountain town of Khoy, west of Tabriz, perhaps out of recognition of his fol-
lower’s love of solitude in nature. At this point, however, an alternative narra-
tive emerges to challenge that of Hulvî. A follower of the noted Halveti shaykh
Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî in Azerbaijan, Yûsuf Müskûrî (d. 890/1485), also penned an
Arabic-language work entitled Silsilatu’l-ʿuyûn that documented Yahyâ’s spir-
itual lineage. In it, he claimed that the “Lâhicân,” as referenced by Hulvî, instead
referred to the Azerbaijani town of Lahıc, near the modern day city of Şamâhî,
and that ʿÖmer el-Halvetî had been born there, and later returned to live out the
remainder of his life in the mountain town of Avahıl in the vicinity north of the
two aforementioned settlements. Qafqaz University professor Mehmet Rıhtım,

after exploring the region, found an ancient graveyard referred to by the local
population as the “ʿÖmer Sultan ziyâretgâhı” in the area of Avahıl marked by a
large, hollowed out tree.45 Rıhtım’s findings do correlate well with the fact that
many of the subsequent Halveti leaders who followed ʿÖmer el-Halvetî were
based in the region of Şirvân, and suggest that Hulvî’s information on this point
might be contested on geographical grounds.
Whatever the truth of the matter, the remoteness of ʿÖmer el-Halvetî from
society was probably what drove earlier historians of the order to describe him
as “not [a] man to propel an organization very far in the institutional sense.”
Yet given the tenor of Hulvî’s narratives about him, these dismissals of ʿÖmer
may prove to be anachronistic and in need of revision.46 Whatever the truth of
his geographic framing, Hulvî’s narratives about ʿÖmer point to the idea that he
was a prominent official in the Ilkhanid military and a descendant of prominent
lineage even before he became a Sufi mystic, which would have given him some
stature. Hulvî’s description of events from his subsequent career, wherever it
might have taken place, also suggests some intersection with various political
figures and events. In one narrative, Hulvî relates that when Muhammad died, he
willed his position to ʿÖmer, but ʿÖmer attempted to reject it in favor of staying
in the mountains, much to the dismay of shaykh’s followers, who “complained
about him to the spiritual presence of their shaykh.” He was compelled to accept
his new role only when a band of raiders attacked the community near where
ʿÖmer was living in the mountains and plundered it. The local population armed
themselves, defeated the bandits, and pursued them into the mountains. When
they found ʿÖmer, they arrested him and dragged him to the town. Only at the
last minute did the local official in charge realize what was happening, and saved
ʿÖmer from execution. He then took ʿÖmer to the dervishes and had him seated
as the proper successor to Muhammad.47
In another narrative, an unnamed local governer (hâkim), while hunting in
the mountains, was chasing a doe through the woods when he and his horse got
stuck in the middle of a river, where he feared he was about to drown. ʿÖmer
suddenly appeared before him and asked, “why are you harassing and killing
the little animals on my mountain? Are you hungry? Don’t do it again!” He then
pulled the general and his horse to safety, earning the latter’s gratitude.48 Another
more problematic narrative suggested that ʿÖmer had traveled to Egypt to make
the pilgrimage at some point during his life, and that he was gone for many years.
Only after the Jalâyrid ruler, Shaykh Uways (d. 776/1374), sent an emissary to
the Mamluk ruler was the shaykh compelled to return, although the narrative
stressed that ʿÖmer did not come to the ruler, but instead went back to Tabriz.49
Still, after examining all this material, we are still left with a critical problem,
which is that, given our present knowledge, corroborating many of Hulvî’s

narratives is impossible. Furthermore, the tenor of the narratives may in fact
argue against the possibility that they might be corroborated by contemporary
sources. The first narrative, for example, has a strong didactic element to it, in
that it is intended to teach its listener the importance of following the will of
one’s shaykh. In addition, it implicitly criticizes ʿÖmer for being overly attached
to solitude. As we shall see in subsequent chapters that outline the history of
the Şaʿbâniye branch of the order, these concerns betray hints of contemporary
shifts in Halveti belief and practice that inclined to a more activist stance. This
shift affected the activities of Halveti leaders and their followers in the Ottoman
context in which Hulvî was active. Moreover, in the latter two narratives, the
desire to tie the shaykhs’ spiritual power to influence over political leaders in
the community runs extensively through Muslim hagiographical narratives in
general, a characteristic that offers proof of sainthood.
Still, there is some evidence that suggests not all of Hulvî’s account can
be dismissed as a trope-ridden construction grounded in didactic narratives.
Another source corroborates the existence of Pîr ʿÖmer el-Halvetî, and sug-
gests that the narratives on which Hulvî drew may have had some grounding in
reality. At some point during the 750s/1350s, a devotee of Shaykh Sadr al-Dîn
al-Ardabîlî (d. 794/1392) was asked to compile a work describing the origins
of the Safavids. This devotee, Tawakkulî b. İsmâʿîl b. al-Bazzâz al-Ardabîlî
(fl. c. 759/1358), carried out his master’s wishes by compiling a massive
Persian-language work entitled Safvât al-safâʾ (“The Purest of the Pure”). This
work extensively describes the lives and practices of both İbrâhîm Zâhid and
his successor, Safî al-Dîn al-Ardabîlî, which he completed in the summer of
759/1358.50
In at least four places in the work, the author mentions an “ʿUmar Khalvatî”
as a key informant for narratives that he collected for the work. In two of those
narratives, ʿÖmer talks about how he had heard about İbrâhîm Zâhid’s encoun-
ters with troops of the Ilkhanid army who had been hostile to him. In the first, one
of the amirs leading the military force tries to seize ʿÖmer for execution, only to
find himself afflicted with a mortal disease that kills him almost instantaneously.
In the second, an Ilkhanid military force accosted İbrâhîm Zâhid and his follow-
ers for some food, and despite the fact that little remained in the pot, İbrâhîm was
nevertheless able to make seventeen bowls of food and oil miraculously appear
without using up the small amount that remained.51 Whatever the truth of these
miraculous accounts, what is most striking about them is that they derive from
within a military context – which fits with Hulvî’s description of ʿÖmer’s mili-
tary service. He may well have drawn these narratives from former soldiers who
developed ties to İbrâhîm Zâhid and his circle. Moreover, in another narrative
about Shaykh Safî al-Dîn, the founder of what would become the Safavid order,

Ibn al-Bazzâz, talks about how ʿÖmer el-Halvetî was present at a gathering at
which the semâʿ was being performed and was therefore a witness to it.
Since we know that Safî al-Dîn died in 735/1334, this suggests that ʿÖmer
el-Halvetî’s connections to İbrâhîm Zâhid remained strong, whatever the possi-
bilities invoked by his connection with Muhammad el-Halvetî in Herat. None of
these narratives preclude the idea that ʿÖmer had made the acquaintance of both
Sufi leaders during the course of his career, and could have acted as an integrat-
ing figure for the teachings of both. In the shifting cross-currents of religious
thought and practice that marked the collapse of the eastern Islamic world during
the Mongol invasions, and would also eventually make the Safavid order Shiʿite
in orientation, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that ʿÖmer el-Halvetî
might also have experimented with a hybrid of Zâhidiyya/Suhrawardiyya ideas
coupled with the more charismatic Sufism of the “eastern” Halveti order under
Muhammad el-Halvetî. That being said, the overall picture may also indicate
that later Halveti silsile builders upon whom Hulvî drew for his work simply
ignored geographical and chronological gaps among these figures known from
the past and whose legitimacy they sought to appropriate. The later narratives
that emerged about them simply aimed to bring them all together and harmonize
them to form a historical – or ahistorical – justification for the order.
Speculative though it may be in parts, we now have some idea about who the
ostensible founders of the Halveti order were. On the other hand, it is less specu-
lative to note that the broader geographical region out of which the antecedent
figures to the Halveti shaykhs had emerged was about to suffer a catastrophic
reversal of fortune through the emergence of Temür-e Lang (d. 807/1405). By
the end of the eighth/fourteenth century, the regions of Persia and the Caucasus
from which the Halveti founders came had become a battlefield. Azerbaijan in
particular, which would act as a launching pad for the ninth/fifteenth-century
Halveti shaykhs, was a contested region caught between the forces of Temür and
the Golden Horde led by Toktamış (d. 807/1405). Timurid interference in the
internal politics of the region led Toktamış to invade and ravage Azerbaijan in
788/1385. This gave rise to back and forth conflict between the two forces that
did not conclude until a decade later. The political and military turmoil occa-
sioned by these difficult years of Timurid–Golden Horde conflict is reflected in
the career of the ostensible successor to the figure of ʿÖmer el-Halvetî, whom we
know only as Akhî Mîrem el-Halvetî (d. 812/1410).
The connections between Akhî Mîrem and his ostensible master ʿÖmer el-
Halvetî are problematic from the outset. Given ʿÖmer’s connections with Safî
al-Dîn, whom we know from other sources died in 735/1334, he must have
had extraordinary longevity to have lived up to 800/1397 as Hulvî claims.52
Moreover, if it seems plausible that ʿÖmer remained tied more closely to the

geographical area of his origins, Akhî Mîrem’s clear ties to Herat and the Halveti
community there suggest that there are problems either with Hulvî’s chronology
or with a conflation of two separate strains of early Halveti leaders. According
to the Lemezât, Akhî Mîrem was born in a village called “Kelibâd” in the vicin-
ity of Herat, and also traveled to Şirvân in the course of his education. With the
coming of the Timurid depredations, however, he fled westward into Anatolia
and eventually settled in the town of Kırşehir, which was a surviving island of
prosperity in the region and home to a number of mystical groups.
Hulvî, perhaps opportunistically, links Akhî Mîrem to the figure of Akhî
Evrân (d. 854/1450), a patron saint of sorts for the guild of tanners in a later
Ottoman era.53 The very designation of Mîrem el-Halvetî as an akhî strongly
suggests his incorporation into the futuwwa tradition that had spread to Anatolia,
perhaps deriving from the Baghdad-based Suhrawardî tradition of the earlier
seventh/thirteenth century.54 In a partial mirroring of the career of his ostensi-
ble mentor ʿÖmer el-Halvetî, Hulvî also describes Akhî Mîrem as having been
attached to a political context, in that he was presenting poetic kasîdes to an
unnamed “emîr of that time” who was having them read at court for entertain-
ment. Despite this budding success as a court poet, Akhî Mîrem was troubled by
his activities. Soon after, he dreamed that the Prophet Muhammad commanded
him to recite a poem for his enjoyment. After praising Akhî Mîrem for doing so,
he commanded him to abandon his neglectful behavior. From this encounter,
Akhî Mîrem sought out Pîr ʿÖmer to become one of his followers.55
However, Hulvî’s information proves somewhat chaotic from this point, as
he places the tomb of Akhî Mîrem in three separate locations: one in the village
of Tepevirân near Kırşehir (a mosque and zâviye are also mentioned), one at the
side of the tomb of Pîr ʿÖmer in Tabriz, and one in the Halveti cemetery in Herat
near the Gazergâh bridge along with other prominent Halveti figures.56 Given the
tenor of subsequent biographical information in the Lemezât, the final scenario
appears most likely, for in another part of the work he deputized one of his fol-
lowers, Amr-ı Rabbanî (d. 848/1444), to stand in for him in Herat during his long
absence.57 This indicates that he returned to Herat at some point, perhaps as a
result of the subsiding of the Timurid furor at the end of his life. We also cannot
rule out the possibility of a deportation back home after Temür had overrun Asia
Minor during his war with the early Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I (d. 805/1403); we
know that Temür’s campaign included Kırşehir as one of its targets.58
Akhî Mîrem’s career, however confusingly articulated, still offers up the
tantalizing suggestion that he could have acted as a link back to the figure of
Muhammad el-Halvetî. Given that they both had connections to Herat on some
level, this raises some interesting possibilities. Could Akhî Mîrem have been
both the true “connecting figure” between the tradition of İbrâhîm Zâhid and

ʿÖmer el-Halvetî as a part of his migrations, and the Herat-based Muhammad el-
Halvetî through his flight westward into Asia Minor? Unfortunately, additional
sources do not exist to give us any definitive evidence on this point. What we do
have suggests that later silsile builders sought to harmonize multiple traditions
from the post-Mongol world that existed in an era where chains of transmis-
sion were either not important or had come to be obscured by the political and
military disruptions of that era, thus allowing for reconstruction to serve the new
needs of Sufi leaders in later times.
Yet the biography of Akhî Mîrem also suggests a broader pattern that was
taking shape by the beginning of the ninth/fifteenth century. We do have inti-
mations that other shaykhs, usually minor, within Hulvî’s silsile were able to
lay claim to connections in Asia Minor, such as Akhî Yûsuf (who spent time
in Niğde and whose name indicates similar futuwwa-style connections, d.
708/1308), Muhammad el-Karsî (who was from Kars and died there during the
Timurid campaign into Asia Minor, d. 803/1401), and Kütbüddîn Tebrizî (who
was tied to the early Ottomans and was supposedly in İznik, d. 818/1415). The
biographical information about these figures can be potentially problematic,
as even Hulvî himself admitted at one point.59 Nevertheless, the geographical
origins of these subjects indicate that Akhî Mîrem represented the first point in
which a member of the Halvetî silsile was tied to the region of Asia Minor for
any length of time, and points toward early connections of the Halveti with other
mystical communities and leaders further to the west.
According to Hulvî, while in Kırşehir, Akhî Mîrem won over an initially
hostile and anti-mystical scholar by the name of Abû Tâlib al-Makkî (d.
824/1421), trained him, and sent him to Egypt. Abû Tâlib later returned to
Kırşehir to take Akhî Mîrem’s place after his death (or after his return to Herat).60
Moreover, even after returning to Herat, Akhî Mîrem continued to attract follow-
ers from Asia Minor. For example, Pîr Tevekkül (d. 837/1433), who hailed from
the Black Sea port of Sinop, pledged himself to Akhî Mîrem after a miraculous
occurrence in which the shaykh was speaking about the phenomenon of tayy-ı
zamân ve mekân in a gathering of his followers. When Pîr Tevekkül recalled the
great distance that separated him from his mother and father in far-off Sinop,
he suddenly found himself in their home. He was able to speak to them, and his
family was able to hear but not see him. When he snapped out of this state and
found himself back in the shaykh’s gathering in Herat, he found that a ewer he
had reached for while in the house to perform his ablutions was still in his hand.
He was subsequently sent back to Sinop, where he died and was buried.61 These
types of narrative evoke a period in which the Halveti shaykhs and others were
on the move and spreading their teachings more widely beyond their traditional
centers of activity.62

In sum, Hulvî’s record of the flight of Akhî Mîrem and his followers west-
ward could represent genuine recollections of the introduction of the Halveti
order into Anatolia. We know from other sources that Pîr İlyâs Amâsî (d.
837/1434) was recognized as being among the first Halveti shaykhs to appear in
the Amasya region in the historical record, having taken control of a Sufi lodge
built there as early as 815/1412, which roughly correlates with the time frame
of Akhî Mîrem.63 While the order appears to have transplanted itself back to the
east after the chaos wreaked by the Timurid invasions, it also planted seeds in the
west as a result of those events, and subsequent Halveti shayhks could build on
those linkages. Moreover, we know that the Timurid invasions had also forcibly
relocated large numbers of Anatolian intellectuals and artisans from their homes
and sent them to the east, where they undoubtedly encountered mystics as part
of their experiences (Pîr Tevekkül may be a good example). We know that later
generations of intellectuals, including Halveti shaykhs, continued to make jour-
neys aimed at visiting the eastern regions of the Timurids as a proving ground for
gaining religious education and skills.64 Ultimately, however, the question of the
exact set of events and connections that marked this period in the Halveti silsile
are not as clearly defined as we would like. The remembrances of the period that
Hulvî records reflect an attempt to bring structure and order to an amalgamation
of different Sufi movements and trends that overlapped in different geographical
regions during a period of political and military disorder in Islamic history.
Conclusion
Most histories of the Halveti order have chosen to begin their discussion of its
history with the ninth/fifteenth-century figure of Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî and his multi-
tudinous followers, some of whom were critical in establishing the order among
powerful figures in the Ottoman hierarchy. Yet in proceeding from this point,
they have chosen to ignore or dismiss, inadvertently or otherwise, the potential
information to be found in lesser known Ottoman hagiographers like Hulvî, who
sought a more thorough presentation of his order’s origins. Hulvî’s work, if used
carefully, may preserve elements that can help us piece together a more distant
set of past traditions to which he was heir, in addition to explaining how his order
sought to restructure that legacy to serve their later needs.
The evidence shows that the earliest parts of the Halveti silsile are the product
of the consolidation that took place in the formative period of Sufism, and can be
dismissed as such. However, through the intersection of works like Hulvî’s with
other sources that have become available, we find evidence that a primary compo-
nent of the Ottoman Halveti origin narrative grounded itself in the projects of the
Suhrawardiyya in the sixth/twelfth and seventh/thirteenth centuries. While Hulvî’s

work does not provide enough detail to trace directly the links of the Halveti
shaykhs of the Later Middle Period back to the Suhrawardiyya, the presence of
multiple Suhrawardiyya figures in the silsile, spurious though they may be, testify
to the influence that the works of the Suhrawardiyya and their teachings exercised
over the Halveti shaykhs, who transmitted the accounts to Hulvî. Perhaps tellingly,
the sources claim that İbrâhîm Zâhid sought out the noted poet Saʿdî-i Şirâzî (d.
691/1292) for his initial training in Shiraz. Not coincidentally, Shiraz was a major
Suhrawardiyya center that was also home to a first-generation follower of ʿUmar
al-Suhrawardî, ʿAlî b. Buzghush (d. 678/1279). ʿAbd al-Rahman Jâmî in his
Nafahât indicated that both had ties to the Suhrawardiyya.65
However, historians must also resist the temptation to reduce the Halveti to
a strictly imitative latter-day descendant of the great Suhrawardiyya project of
the late ʿAbbâsid caliphate. With the weakening of the traditional institutions
of knowledge after the destruction of the Mongol invasions, a space opened up
for alternate forms of Sufi belief and practice, and Hulvî’s work suggests that
the subsequent welding together of traditions represented by figures like ʿÖmer
el-Halvetî and Akhî Mîrem may well have been more important than previously
supposed in creating a Halveti path that would later spread to the west. By graft-
ing together the older, more sober tradition of the medieval period with a new,
charismatic form of authority espoused by Muhammad el-Halvetî and other
“eastern” shaykhs, we can locate a foundation for the Ottoman Halveti in the
uncertain period between the collapse of the Ilkhanid state and the rise of the
Timurids.
In the end, the geographical range that appears among the successors to
ʿÖmer el-Halvetî in Appendix I indicates that the disruptions wrought by the
Timurid invasions of the later eighth/fourteenth century would trigger a growing
spread of this new hybrid order into Anatolia and other parts of the Islamic world.
These movements toward the west and the lands that would become the Ottoman
Empire proved to be opportunities for ʿÖmer’s successors. The growing strength
of the order in these regions, coupled with the rise of the Safavids after the end
of the ninth/fifteenth century, would detach the “western” Halveti from their
Azerbaijanî and Gilanî origins and allow for their re-foundation as a cornerstone
of Ottoman Sufism. It is to that process of shifting gravity to the west that we
must now turn.
Notes
1 See the remarks of Ahmet T. Karamustafa, Sufism: The Formative Period (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 2007), pp. 1–3.
2 Mustafa Uzun, “Hulvî, Cemâleddin (ö. 1064/1654),” DİA, vol. 18, p. 347. At least twelve

manuscript copies have survived, according to the modern Turkish translator and editor
of the Lemezât, Mehmet Serhan Tayşi; see his introduction to Mahmud Cemaleddin el-
Hulvî, Lemezât-ı Hulviyye ez Lemezât-ı Ulviyye (Yüce Velilerin Tatlı Halleri) (sic), ed.
Mehmet Serhan Tayşi (İstanbul: Marmara Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Vakfı Yayınları,
1993).
3 See, for example, the remarks of RÖ-OT, p. 27, n. 1.
4 In citing the Lemezât from this point forward, I include both the folio reference to the
Halet Efendi 281 manuscript of the work found in the Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi in
İstanbul (see “Frequently cited Works”) and the more readily accessible modern Turkish
printed text published by Mehmet Serhan Tayşi in parentheses, as given in n. 2 above. It
should be noted that the binder of the Halet Efendi manuscript has improperly ordered
two sections of the work from 150b–160a and 160b–170a that correspond to 298–319
and 319–340 in the printed text of Tayşi’s edition (ignore marginal note claiming that a
section is missing by anonymous archivist on LH, p. 170a).
5 THV, fols 4b–6a; the narrative is a mixture of Arabic coupled with Turkish translations.
Perhaps because it was a well-known narrative among Hulvî’s circle in later decades, he
included only a shortened version of the narrative and built it into a chapter on the biog-
raphy of ʿAlî b. Abû Tâlib; see LH, fols 19b–20a (49–50).
6 ESO, pp. 224–5.
7 The phenomenon of Hasan al-Basrî’s appropriation as a founding figure in the chains
of authority for multiple Sufi orders has been thoroughly documented in the work of
Suleiman Ali Mourad, Early Islam between Myth and History: al-Hasan al-Basrî (d. 110
H/728CE) and the Formation of His Legacy in Classical Islamic Scholarship (Leiden:
E. J. Brill, 2006), pp. 112–20.
8 Karamustafa, Sufism, p. 104.
9 B. G. Martin suggested that the inclusion of these figures in the Halveti silsile made them
suspect during the tenth/sixteenth century on account of the Safavid threat, and this led
them to strike out the imamate chain from their silsile; see BGM, pp. 284–5. However, I
have not found that to be a widespread phenomenon in other manuscripts of the period,
and Hulvî cheerfully includes all of the twelve Shiʿite imams in an introduction to his
construction of the Halveti silsile; see LH, fols 38b–68a (85–132).
10 Jawid A. Mojaddedi, The Biographical Tradition in Sufism: The tabaqât genre from al-
Sulamî to Jâmî (Richmond: Curzon, 2001), pp. 36–7.
11 K. A. Nizami, “Čishtiyya,” EI 2, vol . II, p. 50; compare also Mourad, pp. 112 and 118.
12 This figure was most likely the individual who initiated ʿUmar al-Suhrawardî’s great-
grandfather into the Sufi path, Ahmad al-Aswad al-Dinâwarî; see ESO, pp. 67–8.
However, this figure also appears under the other aforementioned names in LCH, pp.
414–15; THV, fol. 6b; and LH, fols 123b–27a (237–42). Hulvî’s confusion becomes even
more pronounced when he attempts to explain the lineage of the better-known Qâdî Wajîh
al-Dîn al-Suhrawardî, where he claims Muhammad al-Dinâwarî was his uncle, while
otherwise correctly indicating that Ahmad al-Aswad had initiated Wajîh al-Dîn’s father
Muhammad b. ʿAmmûya (d. 468/1076); compare LH, fol. 129a–b (249) and ESO, pp.
68–9.
13 Perhaps in recognition of this fact, a more recent copy of the Halveti silsile preserved
in Kastamonu inserted Muhammad b. al-Bakrî as a connecting link; see Musa Seyfi
Cihangir, Şeyh Şaʿbân-ı Velî Hazretleriʾnin Hayatı ve Manevi Silsilesi (Kastamonu:
Bilge Kastamonu Gazetesi Basın Yayın Ltd. Şti., 1997), p. 50. However, chronologically

speaking, this still does not resolve the gap, as Hulvî gives a death date of 380/990 for this
figure, whom he defines as a subordinate figure in the silsile associated with Muhammad;
see LH, fols 128b–9a (247–8).
14 ESO, pp. 71–2.
15 Hulvî improbably gives his death date as 487/1094, and offers no information aside from
the pilgrimage story, in which ʿUmar al-Bakrî described the miraculous protection of the
pilgrimage caravan from bandits by Wajîh al-Dîn; see LH, fols 131b–2b (253–4).
16 Karamustafa, Sufism, p. 86; Erik S. Ohlander, “Adab e) In Sufism,” EI3, pp. 40–3 (Leiden:
E. J. Brill, 2009).
17 ESO, p. 71.
18 LH, fol. 134a–b (259–60); compare with ESO, p. 61.
19 LH, fol. 135b (260–1); compare with ESO, p. 79.
20 LH, fols 137a–b (263–4); compare with the accounts in ESO, pp. 98–104. The motif
of Sufi shaykhs assisting the Mongols as a means of enforcing a divine punishment on
fractious or pernicious Muslim rulers appears frequently in post-Mongol Sufi literature;
see Devin DeWeese, “‘Stuck in the Throat of Chingiz Khan:’ Envisioning the Mongol
Conquests in Some Sufi Accounts from the 14th to 17th Centuries,” in Judith Pfeiffer and
Sholeh A. Quinn (eds), History and Historiography of Post-Mongol Central Asia and
the Middle East: Studies in Honor of John E. Woods (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag,
2006).
21 LH, fols 141b and 143b (272 and 277–8).
22 Compare, for example, the similar texts of Mahmud Hulvî and Feridüddîn al-ʿAttâr (d.
c. 627/1230) on the fourth figure in the Halveti silsile, Maʿrûf al-Karkhî (d. 200/815);
LH, fols 95a–99a (183–8) and the sixth/twelfth-century work of Farîd al-Dîn al-ʿAttâr,
Muslim Saints and Mystics: Episodes from the Tadhkirat al-Auliyaʾ (“Memorial of the
Saints”), trans. A. J. Arberry (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1966), pp. 161–5.
23 These terms have their origin in the formulation of Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture
of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, vol. 2 (Chicago, IL: University
of Chicago Press, 1974), pp. 371–3.
24 See the introduction of Süleyman Uludağ and Mustafa Kara in LCH, p. 43.
25 LCH, fols 697–8.
26 For İbrâhîm Zâhid’s connections with political power, see Jean Aubin, “Shaykh İbrâhîm
Zâhid Gîlânî (1218?–1301),” Turcica 21–23 (1991), 39–53 and V. Minorsky, “A Mongol
Decree of 720/1320 to the Family of Shaykh Zâhid,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental
and African Studies 16:3 (1954), 515–27. For a synopsis of al-Simnânî and his family’s
political connections with the Ilkhanid state, see Jamal J. Elias, The Throne Carrier of
God: The Life and Times of ʿAlâʾ ad-dawla as-Simnânî (Albany, NY: State University of
New York Press, 1995), pp. 15–31.
27 LCH, p. 698.
28 Devin DeWeese, “Spiritual Practice and Corporate Identity in Medieval Sufî Communities
of Iran, Central Asia and India: The Khalvatî/ʿIshqî/Shattârî Continuum”, in Religion
and Identity in South Asia and Beyond: Essays in Honor of Patrick Olivelle, ed. Steven
Lindquist (Florence: Società Editrice Fiorentina, forthcoming). I wish to express my
gratitude to Prof. DeWeese for sharing this work with me before its publication and dis-
cussing its elements via correspondence thereafter.
29 Muhammad al-Halvetî’s historical context is difficult to determine. DeWeese’s finding
in one of his sources that Muhammad died in 751/1350 seems most reliable under the

circumstances, see “Spiritual Practice,” p. 238; but other death dates as early as 717/1317
and as late as 780/1378 appear as well. See, for example, Osmanzâde Hüseyin Vassâf,
Sefîne-i Evliyâ, vol. 3 (İstanbul: Kitabevi, 2006), p. 133 and LH, p. 159b (337).
30 DeWeese, “Spiritual Practice,” pp. 238–41. Hostility to the use of tambourines among
other religious figures at the time is corroborated by contemporary fatwâs given against it;
see, for example, Hafız al-Dîn Muhammad b. Muhammad b. Shihâb al-Kurdarî al-Bazzâzî
(d. 827/1424), Al-Fatâwâ al-Bazzâziyya, included in the margins of Mawlânâ al-Shaykh
Nizâm et al., Al-Fatâwâ al-hindiyya wa taʿarafa bil-fatâwâ al-ʿAlâmgîriyya fî madhhab
al-Imâm al-Aʿzam Abî Hanîfah, vol. 6 (Beirut: Dâr al-Maʿrifah, 1973), p. 338 (margin).
31 DeWeese, “Spiritual Practice,” pp. 241–4.
32 DeWeese, “Spiritual Practice,” 229–31 and 266–7; see also Devin DeWeese, An “Uvaysî”
Sufi in Timurid Mawarannahr: Notes on Hagiography and the Taxonomy of Sanctity in
the Religious History of Central Asia (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Research
Institute for Inner Asian Studies, 1993).
33 ESO, p. 306 and n. 1.
34 LH, fol. 176b (352).
35 Compare LH, fols 157b–8a (335–6) with LCH, p. 697. The narrative appears designed
to defend what seemed to be an extraordinary loud vocal dhikr practiced by Muhammad
el-Halvetî as recorded in earlier biographical notices about him in Jâmî’s Nefahât.
36 For more on how the vocal dhikr was a central element for many of Muhammad el-
Halvetî’s critics, and how other shaykhs were presented as looking down on Muhammad
as being of poor spiritual quality, see DeWeese, “Spiritual Practice,” pp. 231–44.
37 LH, fol. 159b (337); LCH, p. 697. According to sources in Herat, the graveyard still exists
and is known as the “Khalvatî Cemetery.”
38 LH, fol. 172b (345); see also Guy Le Strange, The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate, rev.
edn (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1966), p. 174.
39 This assertion cannot be fully correct. The Çobânids could not claim Chinggisid descent,
though they did claim that their tribal ancestor, Sûrghân Shîra, once saved the life of
Chinggis Khan; see R. M. Savory, “Čūbānids (Čobanids),” EI2, vol. 2, p. 68. Moreover,
the reference to “Girây” is probably a mistake on Hulvî’s part, given the prominence of
the Girây Khans of the Crimea to Ottoman history during his time.
40 LH, fol. 172b (346). It is worth noting here that another contemporary of Pîr ʿÖmer, ʿAlâʾ
al-Dawla al-Simnânî (d. 736/1336), also underwent a Sufism-oriented conversion experi-
ence while fighting for the Ilkhanid armies in 683/1284; see Elias, Throne Carrier, pp.
18–22.
41 Savory, “Čūbānids (Čobanids),” p. 68.
42 See, for example, the dispute over the properties mentioned in Minorsky, “Mongol
Decree of 720/1320,” pp. 515–27. It has also been noted that in surviving Sufi sources
record events of the Ilkhanid period evince a distinct embarrassment over their ties to the
Mongol dynastic house; see Judith Pfeiffer, “Reflections on a ‘Double Rapprochement’:
Conversion to Islam among the Mongol Elite during the Early Ilkhanate,” in Linda
Komaroff (ed.), Beyond the Legacy of Genghis Khan (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2006), pp.
376–82.
43 LH, fol. 173a (346); the original here deviates from Tayşi’s translation somewhat.
44 MSV, pp. 30–1; as we shall see later, this narrative would develop an additional compo-
nent where the shaykh would then criticize the tree for revealing his secret to the followers
who had come to find him, and thereby to the rest of the world.

45 MRSY, pp. 101, 106–7 and 156–8; see also Rıhtım’s photographs of the places dis-
cussed on pp. 244 and 249. DeWeese also argued for the geographical license of the later
silsile builders that shifted the gravity of the order westward from Herât; see DeWeese,
“Spiritual Practice,” p. 243 and n. 36.
46 BGM, p. 276; it should be noted that at the time of publication in the early 1970s, Martin
was not aware of Hulvî’s work.
47 LH, fol. 173a–b (347).
48. LH, fol. 175a (349). ʿÖmer is described as a vegetarian on fol. 173a (346–7), and other
narratives for other shaykhs in Hulvî’s work define avoiding meat dishes as a sign of
sanctity.
49 LH, fol. 175b (350). However, this narrative is problematic in that Hulvî claims that the
Mamluk ruler at the time was Sultan Farâj b. Barqûq (d. 815/1412). A cursory examina-
tion of the life of Farâj b. Barqûq shows that he was not even born until 791/1389, and his
rule would not have coincided with that of Shaykh Uways; see J. Wansbrough, “Farâdj,
al-Mâlik al-Nâsir Zayn al-Dîn Abuʾl-Saʿâdât,” EI2, vol. 2, p. 781. Perhaps Hulvî mixed
up Farâj with another Mamluk figure.
50 See E. Glassen, “Ibn al-Bazzâz al-Ardabîlî, Tawakkulî (Tûklî) b. Ismâʿîl,” EI2, vol. 12, p.
382; this work has also been edited and published as Ibn-e Bazzâz-e Ardabîlî, Safvât al-
safâʾ, ed. Gholâm-Rezâ Tabâtabaʾî Majd, rev. edn (Tabriz, 1994); it was first published
in 1373/1953.
51 Safvât al-safâʾ, pp. 240–1.
52 For a discussion of this problem, see RÖ-OT, p. 27 and n. 1; Öngören suggests that an
earlier recorded date of 750/1349 is most likely accurate.
53 LH, fol. 178a (357).
54 For a critical discussion of this important moment in the history of Anatolia and Sufism’s
influence there, see ESO, pp. 271–91.
55 LH, fol. 178a–b (358).
56 LH, fols 178b and 180a (358 and 360).
57 LH, fol. 182b (366).
58 Le Strange, The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate, p. 146.
59 LH, fols 155b–6b, 159b–60a and 170b–1b (329–31 and 339–42). Akhî Yûsuf receives a
burial both in Kırşehir and a hopelessly unclear geographical location that could be inter-
preted as being either in Herat, Gilan or Tabriz, while Muhammad el-Karsî’s biography
is fairly limited. As for Kütbüddîn-i Tebrizî, Hulvî remarks that “those who claim this
personage is not Halvetî err, on account of his wearing headgear of Moroccan leather
rather than the plain headgear of the Halvetî shaykhs,” which suggests that objections had
already been voiced to what some critics viewed as an unjustified Halveti appropriation
of this prominent early Ottoman figure. See also HSN, pp, 58–59.
60 LH, fols 178b–9a and 180a–b (358–9 and 361–2).
61 LH, fol. 181a–b (363–4).
62 I have noted in a recent conference paper that the incidence of “transcending time and
place” (tayy-ı zamân ve mekân) triples in frequency in the 1200–1500 period in Hulvî’s
work from earlier periods; John Curry, “Traversing Time and Space in Later Medieval
Muslim Hagiography: Evolution of a Trope Among the Halvetî Mystics”, paper presented
at the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association conference, Flagstaff, AZ,
April 4, 2009.
63 HSN, pp. 93–4; see also RÖ-OT, p. 29.

64 See, for example, an anecdote about the intent of the Halvetî shaykh İbrâhîm-i Gülşenî in
his youth to travel to Transoxiana, only to be diverted into the court of Uzun Hasan of the
Akkoyunlu before he could reach his destination; MİG, pp. 23–5.
65 LH, fol. 150b (319–20); LCH, pp. 648–50 and 816–17; ESO, p. 306 and n. 2.

Chapter
The Great Expansion: From Regional

Organization to Far- Flung Network,
c. 1400–1600
By the middle decades of the ninth/fifteenth century, a clearer picture of the

activities of Halveti leaders begins to emerge, as the chronological distance
between them and their Ottoman biographers narrows. As a result, historians
can be more certain when they discuss linkages between prominent Halveti
figures and other personalities and events appearing in their societies.1 During
this period, dating from the ninth/fifteenth to the eleventh/seventeenth centuries,
the range and activities of Halveti leaders expanded dramatically. This chapter
provides a broad outline of how the order spread and its sub-branches multiplied
and took a position of widespread political, religious, and social power and
influence in the Islamic world as a whole. This process of growth and expansion
also became intimately intertwined with the expansion of the Ottoman Empire’s
power and influence.
In the centuries that followed the disruptions wreaked by the Timurid inva-
sions, several factors encouraged the growth of the Halveti order’s membership.
The first of these was increased interest among Anatolian Turkish Muslims, who
wished to gain a better knowledge of the traditions of their faith. Initially, not all
Anatolians embarked on this quest willingly. We know that Temür forcibly relo-
cated many captured intellectuals and artisans eastward to Iran and Central Asia,
who later returned bearing an increased knowledge of the traditions and scholar-
ship of the eastern Islamic world as a by-product of their exile there.2 In addition,
a number of sources corroborate the fact that the Ottoman Empire was considered
to be something of a socio-cultural backwater, even in the decades following its
capture of Constantinople and its expansion across Anatolia and the Balkans. Up
until the end of the ninth/fifteenth century, many aspiring Muslim intellectuals,
Anatolian or otherwise, preferred to travel eastward to Iran and Transoxiana,
50

The Great Expansion, c. 1400–1600 51
make the pilgrimage to the holy cities of the Hijaz, or go to Mamluk centers such
as Cairo or Damascus to pursue the best educational opportunities.3
But by the final decades of the ninth/fifteenth century, the growing power
and importance of the Ottoman Empire could not be ignored. Starting in the
870s/1470s, the Ottoman Empire dealt its major Muslim regional competitor, the
Akkoyunlu Sultanate, military blows from which it ultimately could not recover.
With the subsequent collapse and absorption of the Mamluk territories in Egypt
and the Levant, the other major western center of Islamic culture also became part
of the Ottoman domains. By the end of the tenth/sixteenth century, the rise and
consolidation of the Shiʿite Safavids as arch enemies of both Ottoman rule
and Sunnî Islamic institutions drastically limited the scope of religious interac-
tion between Persia and the west, even though those links were never completely
cut.4 This shift into what Marshall Hodgson called the “Gunpowder Empires”
period of early modern history also transformed the Halveti order dramatically
by detaching it from its roots in the Caspian littoral and north-western Persia
and shifting the gravity of its membership westward. This process transformed
them into a predominantly Ottoman mystical brotherhood, and by the eleventh/
seventeenth century, they had become one of the most widespread Sufi orders
there. Between the ninth/fifteenth and eleventh/seventeenth centuries, their influ-
ence in the Islamic world increased exponentially.
Previously, we have examined the process by which the Halveti order
evolved as a hybrid of Sufi trends and ideas across an Islamic world buffeted
by multiple nomadic invaders from the Mongols to Temür. This chapter follows
them as they expanded their reach westward into Asia Minor and other lands
that eventually became part of the Ottoman Empire. It will then examine how
the Halveti order developed associations with powerful Ottoman statesmen and
leaders that facilitated its rapid rise among the Ottomans. At the same time,
hostility intensified against the Halveti from some quarters that either deemed
their practices as deviant, or distrusted their “Persian origins” in an age of pow-
erful anti-Safavid feeling. Finally, it examines how the far-flung Halveti groups
branched out and created a kaleidoscopic mosaic across various regions of the
empire. That diversity sets the stage for the remaining chapters’ more detailed
treatment of the regional sub-branch of the Şaʿbâniye and its place in Ottoman
and Islamic history.
The return to normalcy?: uneven transitions among the

.
Halveti in a post-Timurid age
As we have seen with the case of Akhî Mîrem el-Halvetî in the previous chapter,
the chaos that marked the Timurid invasions drastically affected the lives of the

Halveti shaykhs and their followers. A particularly striking example of this is
the figure of Baba Resûl-i Rûmî (d. 840/1437), who may have begun his career
as a janissary under the fourth Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I. He was forcibly
deported to the east along with a group of Türkmen by Temür after his defeat
of the Ottomans at Ankara in 804/1402. After living with Kalandar dervishes
for a time, he eventually joined the following of the Halveti shaykh İzzeddîn-i
Türkmânî (d. 828/1425). He spent the remaining years of his life in Niğde after
his shaykh died.5 Another example is the career of the Halveti scholar Pîr İlyâs
of Amasya. With Temür’s invasions of eastern Anatolia between 802/1400 and
804/1402, he was captured and deported from his home city to Şirvân, where he
was forced to become a judge (qâdî) for the region. He resigned from this posi-
tion when Temür turned his attention to campaigns further east, but stayed in the
region and eventually became associated with the Halveti shaykhs there. Later,
he was sent back to Amasya to spread the order’s teachings.6
The sources suggest that few viewed the events of the time as positive,
even though they were contributing to the spread of the order. Narratives about
İzzeddîn-i Türkmânî, the nineteenth Halveti shaykh in the silsile, reflect a time
of tension, and Hulvî recounts that İzzeddîn converted to Sufism because of a
traumatic event. İzzeddîn’s father had been a trader who worked on the routes
that ran between Mamluk Egypt and Azerbaijan. This occupation had allowed
İzzeddîn to travel extensively and make the pilgrimage several times. But on his
return to Azerbaijan after his last pilgrimage, his caravan was raided by bandits
and İzzeddîn was captured. After seeing that the bandits were respectful only
to an Indian Sufi who happened to be traveling with them, İzzeddîn resolved
to give up his wealth and follow that path as well if he could only escape the
bandits’ depredations, since they were murdering a number of his traveling com-
panions. Contemporary observers might also link İzzeddîn’s shift away from
commerce toward Sufism to the decline in security that marked the Timurid
upsurge. Moreover, in another account, İzzeddîn’s spiritual power was suppos-
edly tested by Temür himself. Temür ordered his men to steal a sheep from one
of the defenseless local people, and then tried to feed it to the shaykh, on the
assumption that the shaykh would get caught eating something forbidden under
Islamic law because it was stolen property. When the shaykh ate some of the
food, Temür thought that he had exposed İzzeddîn as a fraud who did not know
the difference between canonical and uncanonical foods, only to learn that an old
woman was standing outside his camp crying out for justice because the sheep
she was taking as a gift to İzzeddîn had been stolen by Temür’s men.7
The declining security of the region, coupled with a growing proclivity
toward questioning the legitimacy of Halveti leaders, came to be reflected in
the biographies of subsequent Halveti personalities. In fact, ʿÖmer-i S¸irvânî

(d. 831/1428), whom Hulvî records as being the first zaʾika of the shaykh, was
initially a noted jurisprudent hostile to the Halveti practice of the devrân. He
pledged himself to İzzeddîn’s service only after making a journey to the lodge in
Merağa, where he initially sought to disrupt one of İzzeddîn’s forty-day retreats
and incite attacks against him. Instead of achieving his intent, he joined the
shaykh in his retreat after a confrontation with one of his dervishes.8 Hulvî also
stresses that another zaʾika, İbrâhîm-i Kubâdî (d. 850/1446), was supposedly
descended from the founder of the Hanafî school of law, Abû Hanifa, and that
his father was a noted legal scholar in Tabriz.9 The emphasis of these narra-
tives on the scholarly backgrounds of İzzeddîn’s prominent followers suggests
a growing need for an apologetic defense of the order from its detractors; this
was also a serious issue in Hulvî’s own historical context. The question then
becomes whether or not the narratives reflect a ninth/fifteenth-century context
of rising intolerance based on a reassertion of power by anti-Sufi scholars and
religious leaders, or if Hulvî was back-projecting later didactic narratives, meant
to challenge contemporary views, into a particularly nebulous part of the Halveti
past.
The continuation of Hulvî’s biographies suggest the former, in that Halveti
shaykhs were afflicted by a number of challenges during the turbulent years
that surrounded the conflicts between the rising Karakoyunlu and Akkoyunlu
tribal configurations in eastern Anatolia and Azerbaijan. Hulvî’s narratives,
interestingly enough, make no attempt to conceal the tensions surrounding
the figure of Sadrüddîn-i Hıyavî (d. 860/1456). Even after İzzeddîn had rec-
ognized him as his successor, Sadrüddîn struggled to retain the respect of his
own followers. Much of the tension revolved around Sadrüddîn’s purported
illiteracy. Perhaps in a reflection of the social world of tradesmen from whom
his predecessor İzzeddîn had come, he initially worked as a merchant selling
woolen clothes in a rural village. İzzeddîn encountered and recruited him into
the ranks of the order only after he was asked to visit the village by some of
his devotees.10
One particularly graphic example of the uneasy position Halveti shaykhs
occupied at the time was the relationship of shaykh Sadrüddîn with Muhammad
al-Jilvânî, an ostensible follower who had been based in Egypt and taught the
works of the famed mystic Muhyî al-Dîn b. al-ʿArabî. Muhammad’s background
as an Egyptian scholar suggests that this follower may have been a holdover
whose entry into the order had preceded Sadrüddîn’s becoming its leader. He
may have been tied primarily to İzzeddîn through his Egyptian connections.
He apparently did not have sufficient respect for İzzeddîn’s choice of succes-
sor, however, for during one of the semâʿ gatherings, he insulted Sadreddîn
by implying that “you are an illiterate person . . . the reason for your fame is

the followers which come from exalted lineage like myself.” This drew a bitter
rebuke from Sadrüddîn, who glared at this wayward follower and replied:
Some little boys take their father by the arms, and by making them go around
pressed to their breast, that little one sees himself as tall, he thinks “I’m even
bigger than my father.” But he does not know that if his father drops his arms, he
will tumble to the ground and be ruined!
With that, Muhammad returned to his room, grew ill and died after three days.
His corpse immediately withered away and was scattered to the four winds. Hulvî
also included a second narrative about a “censurer” who came to Sadreddîn’s
lodge and, in a pattern mimicking that of ʿÖmer-i Şirvânî and İzzeddîn, found
the shaykh waiting for him at the door with a cloak. When the shaykh chal-
lenged him to carry out his intent, he repented and joined the order as a dervish
instead.11
These narratives reflect a pattern whereby the growing tension between
the order’s followers and groups hostile to them had begun to influence even
members of the order itself. Even less confrontational members of the order
seemed to experience doubts about their new leader. The aforementioned Pîr
İlyâs, after returning to his home region of Amasya, developed doubts about the
his new master’s illiteracy, and resolved instead to travel to Khorasan to seek the
knowledge of Zayn al-Dîn al-Khâfî (d. 838/1435), the eponymous founder of
what would become the Zeyniye order.12 Interestingly, Hulvî offers conflicting
accounts of what happened thereafter. In one account, Pîr İlyâs dreamed that his
shaykh came to him while he was journeying to the east and convinced him to
return; in another account, he actually reached Zayn al-Dîn’s lodge in Khorasan,
only to find his dervishes waiting at the entrance to tell him that Sadrüddîn had
informed them of his arrival.13 However, both narratives intersect in demonstrat-
ing how the mystical power of Sadrüddîn should have overridden any misgivings
about his illiteracy.
The tensions over Sadrüddîn’s viability as a Sufi leader continued even in
the narratives about his successors. His relationship with his son-in-law, Pîrzâde
Muhammad Takiyüddîn (d. after 860/1456), a son of Sadrüddîn’s own shaykh,
İzzeddîn, also evoked tension.14 During his youth, Pîrzâde seems to have fallen
into an intoxicated and blameworthy state, drinking in taverns rather than pursu-
ing the more sober path espoused by his father İzzeddîn and his fellow Halvetis.
At one point, Pîrzâde even managed to seduce one of İzzeddîn’s dervishes into
his dissolute lifestyle after the dervish had been sent by his father to try and
remonstrate with him. İzzeddîn was so troubled by this turn of events that he
even sought the intervention of a governor and relative of the reigning Şirvânşâh

Khalîl Allah I (d. 866/1462) by the name of Muhammad Beg to try and reform
his son’s behavior, a relationship which demonstrated the growing connections
between this local ruling house and the Halveti order.15 After a confrontation
between all the parties, father and son were reconciled and Pîrzâde returned to
the fold, married Sadrüddîn’s daughter, and was subsequently chosen to succeed
his father-in-law as the head of the Halveti order in Azerbaijan.16
Still, these biographical sketches of the figures of Sadreddîn and his followers
suggest that Sadreddîn remained a controversial figure, and that his credentials as
a religious leader evoked some doubts. These doubts ultimately crystallized in a
dispute over who would eventually succeed Sadrüddîn as head of the order. By
the middle of the ninth/fifteenth century, the members of the order, despite their
survival and expansion in the wake of the Timurid expansion, would enter into a
period of division and disarray that transformed them from a regional Sufi order
into a more universal one.
The “Second Pîr” Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî (d. 869/1465) and the

.
beginnings of the Halveti expansion
In fact, the story of Pîrzâde may offer an important clue about the increasing
fractiousness among the order’s members during this period. The involvement
of local political figures tied to the Şirvânşâhs, who were based primarily in
the towns of Şamâhî and Baku where İzzeddîn had settled, suggested that the
Halveti had reconfigured their political loyalties. While the Şirvânşâhs were
never the dominant political power and often were forced to show deference to
the Karakoyunlu or Akkoyunlu rulers who emerged on the political scene during
the ninth/fifteenth century, they also benefited from governmental stability
bequeathed to them by the extraordinary longevity of three successive rulers who
emerged out of Timurid vassalage: Shaykh İbrâhîm (d. 820/1417), Khalîl Allah I
(d. 866/1462), and Farrukh Yasar (d. 906/1501).17 Perhaps due to that longevity
and stability in an otherwise politically chaotic era, their activities came to inter-
sect with Halveti shaykhs and their followers, and intervention in the affair of the
wayward son Pîrzâde was only the beginning of their involvement.
The Şirvânşâhs became even more involved with the Halveti order with the
emergence of the “Second Pîr” of the order, Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî. The importance
of his contributions to the order would later win him recognition as an important
founding figure for the silsile of the Ottoman Halveti. However, Yahyâ’s road to
this position of prominence was not an easy one, and his activities appear to have
engendered a split in the order between his followers and those of his mentor’s
son. Yahyâ’s own father, who we know only by the name Bahâʾüddîn, served as
the naqîb al-ashrâf under the Şirvânşâh Khalîl Allah I. This meant that Yahyâ

both traced his lineage back to the members of the Prophet’s extended family,18
and that he had important political connections to the court of the Şirvânşâhs.
Hulvî’s biography of Yahyâ devotes much time to discussing the troubled
relationship that he had with his father, who saw Yahyâ’s pedigree as incompat-
ible with any association with a Sufi like Sadrüddîn. Bahâʾüddîn complained that
his son’s involvement with the Halveti order was preventing him from perpetu-
ating the family legacy and that people were gossiping about the relationship.
Given the aforementioned misgivings about Sadreddîn as a public figure, this
was perhaps not surprising. Moreover, the hagiography makes suggestions about
Sadreddîn acting as a “spiritual father” to Yahyâ. At one point, Bahâʾüddîn even
challenged Sadrüddîn directly about his activities, but was eventually won over
by both his son and the shaykh’s responses to his complaints.19
However, the remark about being a “spiritual father” evoked other potential
tensions within the order as well. Yahyâ’s background among the nobility, in
both the political and spiritual sense, gave him the potential to be viewed as an
upstart among the Halveti following – and this seems to have bred some resent-
ment within the order. At some point, Yahyâ broke with many in the order’s
following and withdrew from their home base in the town of Şamâhî to settle in
the vicinity of the Şirvânşâhs’ palace in Baku, where his tomb is located today.
By Hulvî’s account, Sadrüddîn had indicated that Yahyâ was to act as his suc-
cessor, but his son-in-law Pîrzâde, claiming direct descent, bid for the leadership
of the order instead. Since the majority of the order’s followers chose to side
with Pîrzâde, Yahyâ withdrew from the region with his remaining followers and
settled in Baku. His family connections to the Şirvânşâhs likely came in handy
in this relocation process.
There is some disagreement among the sources as to when exactly these
events took place, however. Hulvî suggests that this happened after Sadrüddîn’s
death in 860/1456, whereas other sources claim that Yahyâ lived in Baku for
close to forty years after his arrival, which would place his departure closer to
830/1426.20 Another intriguing possibility, given what we know about Pîrzâde’s
controversial practices, is that Yahyâ may have been forced into a subordinate
position by Sadrüddîn himself once his future son-in-law returned to the fold
and married into the family. In this case, Yahyâ’s actions might even indicate a
split in the order at a time when Sadrüddîn was still alive. Given Yahyâ’s later
prominence in the order’s history, the sources would likely seek to downplay
any differences with his immediate predecessor in the silsile and seek to pin the
blame entirely on Pîrzâde instead.
Whatever conclusions can be drawn about the tensions between Yahyâ,
Pîrzâde, and the Halveti following during Sadrüddîn’s lifetime, one element is
indisputable: Yahyâ was a respected figure who worked in close proximity to

the court of the Şirvânşâh rulers. We know this because his tomb, marked by a
large octagonal Selçuk-style tower, still stands in the inner palace complex of
the rulers in Baku today.21 Moreover, perhaps in response to the tensions over
the succession, he recruited an extraordinarily large number of followers and
supporters. Hulvî claims that he attracted over 10,000 followers and trained 360
successors; more interestingly, he suggested that he designed seventeen different
types of headgear and turbans for various followers who subsequently spread the
order’s teachings to other places.22 Tensions with Sadrüddîn and his descend-
ants may have led Yahyâ to aggressively cultivate a broader following to defend
his alternative branch of the order against the Şamâhî-based branch, even if this
proved to be only a temporary rift that was mended later. In building up this
following, his connections with the local Şirvânşâh rulers and their supporters
undoubtedly helped. The combination of political clout and a need to build up a
new following quickly in the context of a rift with his former colleagues subse-
quently launched a new era for the Halveti order.
Yahyâ’s major contribution to the development of the Ottoman Halveti
was his composition of the order’s primary litany to be recited during the zikr
ceremony, a work called the Vird-i Settâr. This work represents a recitation of
praises for God, followed by a recitation of His ninety-nine names, praises for
the Prophet Muhammad and his followers, and concluding with a plea for for-
giveness of those performing the recitation.23 While the multiple sub-branches of
the Halveti order that would emerge out of Yahyâ’s activities would see a great
deal of divergence in terms of dress and practice, the touchstone of the Vird as a
primary prayer would help to maintain a unifying point of reference in later gen-
erations. This became especially important as the ninth/fifteenth-century Halveti
shaykhs and their Ottoman descendants became increasingly detached from their
homelands by subsequent hostilities with the Safavids.
Yahyâ’s activities proved so critical to the spread and evolution of the Halveti
order in later generations that his memory may have come to overshadow the
order’s earlier foundations as discussed in the previous chapter. For example,
some elements in Halveti teachings, such as their seven-stage path of progres-
sion, are sometimes attributed to Yahyâ even though their roots seem to lie much
earlier in the period of İbrâhîm Zâhid.24 Hulvî recognized the importance of the
Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî era by dividing the remainder of his biographical work into two
halves, which he labeled the Sünbüliye (İstanbul-based) and Gülşeniye (Egypt-
based) branches of the order.25
However, in building up his substantial following, Yahyâ appears to have
fallen victim to the some of the same troubles that had swirled around his own
shaykh, Sadrüddîn. Several of his followers clashed over who would succeed
Yahyâ as the leader, a tension that is reflected in eleventh/seventeenth-century

Halveti hagiographies that put forth variant claims about the foundational figures
in their silsiles. For example, clashing narratives exist about the careers of Pîr
Şükrullah Halife (d. after 868/1465)26 and Yûsuf Mahdûm (d. 890/1485), the
ostensible founder of the Ottoman Sivasiye branch of the Halveti order. Hulvî’s
account of Pîr Şükrullah describes how he went on the pilgrimage to avoid the
developing power struggle, only to learn in a dream from Seyyid Yahyâ that
“his son” had been “sacrificed” so that Şükrullah could take his place. On the
other hand, the later Halveti hagiographer from the Sivâsî sub-branch of
the order, Muhammad Nazmî Efendi (d. 1112/1701) preserves an argument in
favor of a foundational figure for their own silsile, Yûsuf Mahdûm, that suggests
that Yahyâ viewed him as being like his son.27 The similarity in language and
description of both candidates as being “like a son” to Yahyâ suggest a shared
origin in the tensions surrounding the succession.28
Even if Yahyâ had trained only a fraction of the number of successors that
the sources claim, it was probably inevitable that different spiritual descendants
of the order would diverge in different directions. One source notes that Yahyâ
tried to deal with the potential problem that could have arisen from this strategy
by issuing the following command to his followers: “The multitude of successors
is suitable for teaching etiquette and customs to the people. As soon as it comes
to the guide who will take his place after the shaykh, however, he can only be a
single person.”29 Such a statement invited controversy when the potential suc-
cessors numbered in the dozens, and it is ironic that the course of subsequent
events and conflicting source materials deprive historians of opportunities to
identify any one clear successor to emerge after Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî’s death. The
collapse of both the Akkoyunlu dynasty and the Şirvânşâhs by the end of the
ninth/fifteenth century meant that any record of the subsequent development
of large numbers of Yahyâ’s successors fell into obscurity, especially as some
of the order’s members began to migrate away from the rising hostility of the
Shiʿite Safavids. When tracing the subsequent history of the Halveti, it becomes
clear from both an examination of Hulvî’s silsile and other works that the order’s
foundations rapidly shifted westward into the rapidly expanding Ottoman
domains (see Appendix I).
An exception that proves the rule in this case is the history of the Ottoman
Sivâsiye sub-branch of the Halveti order, the only group which we can confirm
continued their activities well into the period of Safavid rule. One of Yahyâ’s
followers, Yûsuf Müskûrî (d. 890/1485), returned to his master’s old proving-
ground of Şamâhî, and in an apparent posthumous victory, reclaimed the town
for the Yahyâ-based branch of the Halveti order and expanded its institutional
framework there. After his death, the succession passed to Muhammad Rükkî
(d. 903/1498), about whom little is known save that he attracted a scion of the

weakening Şirvânşâh house in the form of Şâh Kubâd Şirvânî (d. 950/1544),
who was a descendant of the Şirvânşâh ruler Khalîl Allah I and served as a gov-
ernor for the province.30 Perhaps due to the fact that Azerbaijan was situated in a
border region between the Ottomans and the Safavids after the decisive battle at
Çaldıran in 920/1514, this branch of the Halveti order managed to carry on their
activities in Şamâhî up until 963/1556. At this point, Şâh Kubâd’s successor,
ʿAbdülmecîd Şirvânî (d. 972/1565), migrated away from Azerbaijan to settle in
the Ottoman provincial town of Tokat, thereby founding the Halveti sub-branch
known as the Sivâsiye.31 The earliest shaykhs of the Sivâsiye silsile may not
have been unique, and the possibility that some followers of the Halveti order
persisted in their heartlands after the rise of the Safavids seems to be corrobo-
rated by other sources. At one point, the hagiography of İbrâhîm-i Gülşenî issued
a potent criticism of those who chose to stay behind and tried to maintain their
place under the new Safavid rulers who had persecuted him.32 However, the only
reason we have a record of this surviving branch of the Halveti order from its
former heartlands is that it migrated into Ottoman territory and became a major
force in the struggles between Halvetis and Kâdızâdelis during the eleventh/
seventeenth century, which is what led Muhammad Nazmî Efendi to memorial-
ize their history.
According to most Halveti accounts, the İstanbul-based Sünbüliye and
Egypt-based Gülşeniye branches of the Halveti order framed their conception
of the deeply-contested succession to Yahyâ’s legacy by situating their spiritual
lineage upon two key figures. In the case of the Sünbüliye, the Halveti line passed
to a man who otherwise seemed to be an unlikely and obscure provincial succes-
sor by the name of Muhammad el-Erzincânî (d. 879/1474). The Gülşeniye, on
the other hand, traced their lineage to the more historically attestable figure of
Dede ʿÖmer Rüşenî (d. 892/1487), the teacher of the well-known İbrâhîm. The
two figures did, however, share one thing in common, in that their careers were
increasingly intertwined with prominent members of the Akkoyunlu dynasty,
rather than that of the Şirvânşâhs further to the east. As the Akkoyunlu weakened
in the face of growing Ottoman and Safavid power, the stage would be set for the
institutional base of the Halveti order to shift westward into the Ottoman Empire.
.
Halveti emigration to the west and south:
.
the GülŞeni ye branch
Given the fractiousness that had become especially pronounced during Yahyâ-yı
Şirvânî’s lifetime and which marked an expansion of the Halveti order, it is not
surprising that Yahyâ’s death opened a new era in its history. Yahyâ’s broaden-
ing of the order’s base, connections with the political leaders of his time, and

expansion of its leadership to encompass multiple candidates who spread the
order’s ideas throughout the wider region of the Near East would guarantee
increased attention for the proliferating sub-branches of the order in the Islamic
world. While the present work cannot aspire to full coverage of all the important
sub-branches that evolved out of the process between the ninth/fifteenth and
twelfth/eighteenth centuries, the two sub-branches that came to be known as
the Gülşeniye and Cemâliye/Sünbûliye are critical for understanding the milieu
from which subsequent groups like the Şaʿbâniye originated.
The first of these sub-branches, the Gülşeniye, took their name from the
Halveti shaykh İbrâhîm-i Gülşenî, a figure who would become well known
in Ottoman society and history even beyond Sufi circles. However, the name
“Gülşenî” from which the sub-branch’s name was taken was given to him by a
successor of Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî by the name of Dede ʿÖmer Rûşenî, whom many
hagiographical works posit as the founder of this new branch.33 Dede ʿÖmer,
like many of the Halveti devotees that appear in the Halveti silsiles from the
ninth/fifteenth century, traveled from the western regions of Asia Minor and the
emerging Ottoman Empire to the heartlands of the Halveti order in Azerbaijan.
According to Hulvî, Dede ʿÖmer was born in the region of Aydın in western
Anatolia to a family of local grandees, the Aydınoğulları, who had initially com-
peted with the Ottomans during the beylik period. After gaining a religious edu-
cation there, he moved to the old Ottoman capital of Bursa to take up a scholarly
position as an assistant to Çandarlı İbrâhîm Paşa (d. 905/1499), a teacher at the
medrese that was attached to the well-known Green Mosque and Tomb complex
of the Ottoman ruler Çelebi Sultan Mehmed I (d. 824/1421).34 He seemed poised
to become a player of some importance among the early Ottoman ʿulemâ, but
his career veered off course when he struck up a relationship with one of his stu-
dents, Hızır Bâlî, and the two began spending a lot of time together.
Some of the narratives imply a deep suspicion that developed in the com-
munity over the relationship between the two men. Hulvî’s account states that
“some corrupt people” went to the youth’s father, a merchant in the Gelincik
market, and accused the two of having a homosexual relationship. This led Hızır
Bâlî’s parents to intervene and forbid their son from seeing his teacher. Both the
teacher and student reacted badly to this turn of events, with Hızır Bâlî falling
into a deep depression and sickness, and Dede ʿÖmer abandoning his career
and falling into a dissolute lifestyle. Eventually, intervention came in the form
of a successor of his older brother ʿAlâeddîn el-Halvetî, who came and ordered
ʿÖmer into an isolation cell to reflect on the name “Hızır,” a name that also
referred to a prophetic figure in the Islamic tradition.35 On the final day of his
first forty-day retreat, the otherworldly Hızır appeared to ʿÖmer in a vision and
commanded him to go to Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî, to “exchange your worldly [feeling]

for true ones,” and spat into his mouth. Cured of his spiritual maladies at last,
ʿÖmer emerged from isolation only to encounter a seriously ill Hızır Bâlî, who
had finally convinced his parents to release him from his captivity to meet with
his teacher. Before his departure to the east, ʿÖmer proceeded to place some of
the Hızır saliva into Hızır Bâlî’s mouth, thereby curing him in turn. According to
the narrative, Hızır Bâlî would later go on to become a shaykh in his own right
as a result of this experience.36
While the narrative points to a happy ending, it also suggests at first glance
that young elite intellectuals who got themselves into trouble, such as the disaf-
fected ʿÖmer, could re-invent themselves by traveling to the east. However,
the narrative suggests other possibilities lurking behind the narrative itself due
to the appearance of ʿAlâeddîn el-Halvetî (d. 867/1463), another successor of
Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî who was active in the Ottoman Empire during the reign of
Sultan Mehmed II after his conquest of Constantinople. In another part of the
work, Hulvî explains that ʿAlâeddîn had gone to Şirvân to escape the “confu-
sion” of the Karamanoğlu dynasty in southern Anatolia in the years preceding
its conquest and incorporation into the Ottoman Empire.37 After completing
his training with Yahyâ in Baku, he was sent to Anatolia to spread the order’s
teachings, and was apparently so effective in doing so that he attracted the atten-
tion of Sultan Mehmed II himself, who demanded that he be brought to Edirne.
He proved so effective at winning followers among the Sultan’s entourage that
he aroused suspicion among other factions at the court and eventually fled the
scene, leaving a successor by the name of Maʿsûd Rûmî in the lodge built for
him on the banks of the Tunca river near Edirne. He then returned to his home
region of Aydın, before returning to Larende in Karaman to become a powerful
figure at the Karamanid court shortly before its collapse to Mehmed’s forces.
What all this tells us is that Dede ʿÖmer’s family relationship with prominent
Halveti shaykhs was not uncontroversial during the reign of Mehmed II, as one
of Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî’s prominent followers had fallen out with factions at the
Ottoman court and had gone over to the court of one of their rivals in Anatolia,
the Karamanoğlu.38
A second narrative suggests some reasons why ʿAlâeddîn might have run
afoul of some factions at Mehmed’s court. Since ʿAlâeddîn was a shaykh who
brought his audiences to a state of ecstasy, and was very influential as a preacher,
he seems to have attracted the attention of a young firebrand named Molla ʿArab
(d. 938/1531), who would later become a prominent Şeyhülislâm noted for his
opposition to Sufi rituals and practices. When ʿAlâeddîn came to Bursa, Molla
ʿArab planned to attack him publicly in order to discredit him, only to find
himself drawn into a state of ecstasy through his encounter with ʿAlâeddîn.39
While the narrative is transparently apologetic in tone and aimed at discrediting

opponents of Sufism, it nevertheless suggests that hostility had emerged toward
Halveti leaders like ʿAlâeddîn, given their connections with regions the Ottomans
deemed to be potentially hostile to their interests. Moreover, the fact that these
prominent religious leaders tended to take up residence with Mehmed II’s oppo-
nents among the Karamanoğlu and Akkoyunlu could not have contributed to
positive relations between the emerging Halveti shaykhs and Mehmed II’s court.
When this context is brought to bear, Dede ʿÖmer’s flight to Baku may
have had additional dimensions that went above and beyond the Hızır Bâlî
incident. Perhaps tellingly, he never returned to western Anatolia and spent the
remainder of his life in the east even after Yahyâ’s death. Instead, he eventually
became a prominent figure at the court of the Akkoyunlu Sultanate at some point
after Yahyâ’s death; perhaps Yahyâ may have sensed the rising power of the
Akkoyunlu ruler Uzun Hasan and his followers after their victory in the Battle of
the Tigris in 861/1457, and dispatched followers like Dede ʿÖmer westward into
their power bases to influence them.40 This plan proved to be shrewd, for Dede
ʿÖmer soon attracted the attention of Selçukşâh Begüm, the wife of Uzun Hasan
and a daughter of one of the dynasty’s founding fathers; she would later act as
queen mother for Uzun Hasan’s successor, Sultan Yaʿkûb.41 She had a lodge
built for Dede ʿÖmer outside Tabriz and sent various members of the court back
and forth to him; his eventual successor, İbrâhîm-i Gülşenî, would be recruited
in this way.
As the Akkoyunlu emirate weakened in the wake of its defeat by the
Ottomans in 877/1473, figures like Dede ʿÖmer may have provided much
needed legitimacy to the dynasty. For example, one narrative credits Dede
ʿÖmer with backing Yaʿkûb in a revolt against him by one Hibe Sultan in
Baghdad who had overthrown one of Yaʿkûb’s relatives.42 Moreover, part of
the value of Muhyî-yi Gülşenî’s hagiography is that it records the biography of
Dede ʿÖmer Rûşenî primarily through his and his follower İbrâhîm’s interac-
tions with various rulers, dignitaries, and religious leaders tied to the Akkoyunlu
court. Interestingly, Muhyi frequently presented Dede ʿÖmer and his followers
as checking various abuses of power committed by prominent Akkoyunlu men
of state. The Menâkıb claims that both Dede ʿÖmer and, more prominently, his
successor İbrâhîm periodically advised a senior scholar at court by the name
of Qâdı ʿÎsâ Sâvajî (d. 896/1491). Despite their friendship, some of the narra-
tives evoke tension between the Halveti leaders and Qâdı ʿÎsâ, and suggest that
they periodically clashed with him on matters of religion and policies of state
centralization and taxation that eventually contributed to the unraveling of the
Akkoyunlu state.43 Nevertheless, Dede ʿÖmer and his followers had established
close relations with the Akkoyunlu, especially during the reigns of Uzun Hasan
and Yaʿkûb, even if they became strained from time to time, and these bonds

would continue beyond Dede ʿÖmer’s death in 892/1487. Having taken a page
out of his mentor’s book by attaching himself to a prominent dynastic family and
spreading the order’s teachings through their ranks, Dede ʿÖmer comes across in
our sources as a figure who emulated the model that his teacher Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî
had pioneered.
Still, the relationship between the Halvetis and the Akkoyunlu had begun
to deteriorate by the time of ʿÖmer Rûşenî’s death. Moreover, the career of
ʿÖmer’s successor, İbrâhîm-i Gülşenî, would not benefit from the same degree
of stability. With the death of Sultan Yaʿkûb, the subsequent execution of Qâdı
ʿÎsâ, and the coming to power of İbrâhîm’s enemy Sultan Rüstem by 898/1492,
İbrâhîm soon found himself under threat of persecution, and he often struggled
to defend his former followers from the attacks unleashed upon them by the new
regime.44 He eventually went on pilgrimage to escape the tense situation back at
home, only to find his enemies had followed along with him to undermine his
position. He was persuaded to return to the Akkoyunlu domains after returning
from pilgrimage only with some difficulty.45
The life and career of İbrâhîm, his descendants, and the rise of the Gülşeniye
sub-branch of the Halveti order requires a separate study in and of itself, both
on account of both the massive hagiography written about him and his fol-
lowers by the later Ottoman Halveti scholar and activist Muhyî-yi Gülşenî (d.
1014/1606), and the deep roots that the order struck in the Ottoman province
of Egypt from the tenth/sixteenth century onward.46 Nevertheless, some ele-
ments of the Gülşeniye story cannot be ignored, in part because later Halveti
authors like Hulvî seized upon the foundations laid by Muhyî’s literary work
as an opportunity to reunify the various branches of the order by the beginning
of the eleventh/seventeenth century. Whether or not the Egyptian sub-branch of
the order maintained or developed links with other evolving sub-branches as the
Ottoman Empire consolidated its conquests of the former Mamluk domains of
Syria, Egypt, and North Africa is more difficult to determine, although we know
that many Ottomans passed through Egypt on their way to the pilgrimage and
intersected with the Gülşeniye there.47
The Menâkıb-i İbrâhîm-i Gülşenî, an under-studied treasure trove for the
history of the Akkoyunlu, Mamluks, and Ottomans during a key transitional
period in their history, compiles a lengthy record of anecdotes about the life,
career, and successors of İbrâhîm-i Gülşenî from multiple sources throughout
the Ottoman Empire. While any attempt to summarize its contents does not
do justice to the complexity of its presentation, the work tells how İbrâhîm-i
Gülşenî eventually fell victim to the political shifts that marked the collapse
of the Akkoyunlu Sultanate after the death of his patron Sultan Yaʿkûb in
896/1490. Faced with the rise of the heterodox Safavid movement by the end

of the ninth/fifteenth century, İbrâhîm and his young son Ahmed el-Hiyâlî
(d. 980/1571) barely escaped the onslaught, and after much trial and tribula-
tion, reached Cairo and settled there during the waning years of the Mamluk
Sultan Qansûh al-Ghawrî (d. 922/1516).48 Despite the apologetic presentation
of its author Muhyî, the Menâkıb cannot obscure the obvious linkages between
Gülşenî and the Mamluk rulers, for Gülşenî was invited to take up residence
in the central mosque of the Muʾayyadiyya near Bab al-Zuwayla, and his son
Ahmed would be married to the widow of the last Mamluk Sultan Tumânbây
after his execution in 923/1517. After anti-Ottoman revolts flared up in Egypt in
930/1524, some accused the Gülşeniye of involvement and had an aged shaykh
İbrâhîm summoned to İstanbul for an investigation of his activities. İbrâhîm, in
part with the help of key allies, was able to make the case for his innocence, for
despite the hostility of Süleyman’s grand vizier İbrâhîm Paşa toward him, he was
exonerated in 935/1529 and allowed to return to Egypt to live out his remaining
years there. His tomb complex subsequently became a center for the order’s fol-
lowers under his son Ahmed and his descendants well into the twelfth/eighteenth
century.
The flight of İbrâhîm westward into Egypt also draws our attention to two
other successors to Dede ʿÖmer Rûşenî in some hagiographical sources, Shaykh
Timûrtâşî (d. 903/1498) and Shaykh Şâhin-i Misrî (d. 935/1528). Both these
figures had preceded İbrâhîm-i Gülşenî to Cairo, and Muhyî mentions them in
a respectful tone, though the scope of their contact with İbrâhîm’s followers
cannot be clearly determined.49 Both Timûrtâsî and Şâhin were said to have been
recruited into the order by an otherwise unknown successor of Dede ʿÖmer’s by
the name of Shaykh Husayn al-ʿAyntabî. They then traveled to the Akkoyunlu
Sultanate to join Dede ʿÖmer’s circle, subsequently returning to Egypt to prepare
the way for the order there. While Muhyî’s and Hulvî’s historical records have
privileged the Gülşeniye over these other adherents to the Rûşenî tradition, they
remain influential into the present in a way that the Gülşeniye have not.50
One thing sets the Gülşeniye branch of the order apart from some of the
branches in the more central regions of the Ottoman Empire to the north. Its
leadership, from İbrâhîm-i Gülşenî onward, was passed down through a heredi-
tary chain well up into the eleventh/seventeenth century. The head of the order,
based at İbrâhîm’s tomb in Cairo, would be a direct male descendant of the
order’s founder.51 This may have been the Gülşeniye order’s way of maintain-
ing Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî’s injunction about having only one true successor acting
as the overall leader of the order. Despite this hereditary conservatism in the
order, however, this did not limit its range to its headquarters at Gülşenî’s tomb
in Cairo alone, as successors were sent to İstanbul and other regions of the
Ottoman Empire, and additional members of the order maintained a substantial

presence around Diyarbakır and northern Syria well into the eighteenth century.
Hulvî implies that in the case of the Diyarbakır-based Gülşeniye, powerful
family ties governed that branch as well. Sâdık ʿAlî Efendi (d. 961/1554), whose
father ʿAlî Çelebi had donated a substantial part of his mercantile wealth and
property to the order, and whom İbrâhîm-i Gülşenî had left in charge when he
fled Diyarbakır for Egypt, later passed the leadership of the order to his nephew,
Hasan el-ʿAmidî (d. 1019/1611), perhaps with his father serving as shaykh in
between them.52
.
The shift of the Halveti order into the Ottoman Empire:
.
the Cemâliye and its sub-branches
The origins of a second influential branch of the Halveti order that emerged out
of the chaotic environment in the Halveti homelands is somewhat more obscure
than that of the Gülşeniye. Contemporary observers might well have deemed the
powerful Gülşeniye, with their links to the Akkoyunlu state, to be the most pow-
erful and influential at the time. With the shift in political fortunes in the region
by the tenth/sixteenth century, however, the Cemâliye and various sub-branches
of the order that emerged from it, such as the Sünbüliye of İstanbul, proved to be
far more influential in Ottoman circles. It may have been a simple case of geog-
raphy, for the Cemâliye eventually implanted themselves in the Ottoman capital
of İstanbul and spread outward from the political center, whereas the base of the
Gülşeniye in Egypt defined them as provincial after the events of 923/1517. By
the end of the century, Gelibolulu Mustafa ʿAlî’s account of Cairo depicted Sufi
orders like the Gülşeniye as strange and alien in comparison with groups in the
political center of the Empire.53 Also, as Hulvî noted, they still suffered from
suspicions about possible anti-Ottoman sentiment, in part due to a perceived
linkage with the former Mamluk dynasty.54 Still, no one could have predicted the
turn of events that led to the rise of the Ottoman Empire as the dominant power
in the region, and in the immediate period following Yahyâ’s death, the rise of
the Cemâliye branch of the order proves fairly obscure as compared with their
Egyptian counterparts.
Part of that obscurity derives from the overshadowing presence of Cemâl el-
Halvetî as a pivotal figure in the spread of the Halveti order among the Ottoman
domains. Born in the central Anatolian city of Aksaray to a prominent and influ-
ential family that also included such luminaries as the future şeyhülislâm Zenbilli
ʿAlî Efendi and Sultan Selim I’s vizier Pirî Paşa, he was a figure of potential
influence in the Ottoman context. Moreover, the family ancestor, Cemâleddîn
Aksarâyî (d. 791/1388), was well known for authoring works on ethics, philoso-
phy, and the religious sciences, and Cemâl himself may have been pursuing a

career in jurisprudence in the earlier stages of his life.55 After becoming attracted
to Sufism, some sources suggest that he initially began his training with a shaykh
of the Zeyniye order, Hacı Halife Kastamonî (d. 895/1489), but quickly became
attached to the Halveti order through Shaykh ʿAbdullah, one of the followers of
ʿAlâeddîn el-Halvetî. This initial connection grew in strength with the arrival of
ʿAlâeddîn in the Karamanoğlu emirate after he left Mehmed II’s court. However,
ʿAlâeddîn died in 867/1463, and ʿAbdullah soon followed him, leaving the
young Cemâl in limbo with no shaykh.56
With the subsequent collapse of the Karamanoğlu emirate to the rising power
of the Ottomans after the death of İbrâhîm Beg in 869/1464, the fortunes of the
Aksarâyî family may have gone into temporary eclipse, and it is perhaps telling
that Cemâl reappears in the historical record far from the centers of Karamanoğlu
power in proximity to the northern Anatolian city of Tokat. Here, he spent a
number of years under the guidance of an illiterate Halveti Türkman shaykh,
whom we know only by the name Tâhirzâde. An air of the antinomian surrounds
Tâhirzâde, who was described as being one of the followers of the “order of
Shaykh Safî,”57 and who seems to have espoused extreme forms of asceticism.
Several sources record that Tâhirzâde used to have his followers dig deep holes
in the wilderness and then remain in them for forty days of retreat. Once, Cemâl
nearly died of starvation while under his tutelage. Yet here again, Cemâl’s bad
luck with his choice of teachers continued, since Tâhirzâde also died before he
could complete his training.58 Still, Cemâl’s association with Tâhirzâde strongly
suggests an initial disillusionment with the growth of Ottoman power, and it is
interesting that his activities paralleled that of later disaffected Ottoman subjects
who gravitated to Safavid leaders by the end of the ninth/fifteenth century.59
Once Tâhirzâde died, however, he made a fateful decision to follow in the
footsteps of his predecessors and head eastward to seek out Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî.
During the course of his journey, he stopped in the town of Erzincan, where he
encountered a follower of Yahyâ’s by the name of Muhammad el-Erzincânî,
who suggested that Cemâl would not be able to complete his quest and that he
should instead stay in Erzincan; at this point, the various narratives about these
events diverge somewhat. One version of events told of how Cemâl traveled to
Baku, only to find that he had arrived shortly after Yahyâ’s death and burial in
869/1465. After deciding to sleep at the foot of the newly built grave, Cemâl saw
a vision of Yahyâ commanding him to return to Erzincan to complete his training
with his chosen successor.60 Other sources suggest that Cemâl had not traveled
more than a day or two before receiving word that there was no need to continue
to Baku since Yahyâ had already died, so he returned.61 The variant narratives
suggest a desire by some later hagiographers to tie Cemâl el-Halvetî directly to
Yahyâ as a means of giving him additional legitimacy. However, they also point

to the somewhat obscure origins of the Cemâliye branch of the order through
the figure of Muhammad el-Erzincânî.62 In this case, the ostensible pupil would
outshine the master in terms of his impact upon the order’s future.
This does not mean that we should dismiss Muhammad el-Erzincânî out of
hand, however, for Hulvî does record a number of interesting narratives about
Muhammad and his followers. One prominent motif of Muhammad’s biogra-
phy is his relationship with the prominent Akkoyunlu ruler, Uzun Hasan. Hulvî
records that on the eve of the decisive battle of Otlukbeli between the Ottoman
Sultan Mehmed II and Uzun Hasan in 877/1473, Muhammad warned Uzun
Hasan not to engage Mehmed’s force because “it is better for you and your sol-
diers; they are the gâzis of the Muslims and intelligent people know to be afraid
and cautious of them.”63 When Uzun Hasan failed to heed the shaykh’s advice,
his forces were cut to pieces on the battlefield, his sons were killed, and he was
forced to make a peace treaty after enduring a lecture from the shaykh about his
heedlessness. This narrative strongly suggests an ex post facto justification of the
shaykh as a supporter of the Ottoman cause who tried to avert conflict between
the Akkoyunlu and the Ottomans; however, we have little in the way of corrobo-
ration that this was the case.
Still, Hulvî also claims that one of Muhammad el-Erzincânî’s followers, Pîr
Ahmed el-Erzincânî (d. after 877/1473), was instrumental as the primary dip-
lomat who met with Mehmed II and his entourage after the battle to conclude
a peace treaty between the two sides. Interestingly, Pîr Ahmed had married a
woman who was another descendant of the Aksarâyî family from which Cemâl
el-Halvetî also came, suggesting how the descendants of this prominent family
had spread across the eastern Anatolian landscape. It also may explain why Pîr
Ahmed was tapped for the diplomatic assignment. Pîr Ahmed succeeded in his
mission by supposedly winning over the Ottoman sultan with the argument that
by ending the spilling of blood between Muslim powers, he was doing Mehmed
a favor by saving him from judgment in the afterlife. Mehmed responded by
inviting Ahmed to İstanbul, where he preached in the Aya Sofya mosque and
attended Mehmed’s court before returning to Erzincan.64 Yet Pîr Ahmed’s biog-
raphy contains echoes of the criticisms leveled at Mehmed II for his over-zealous
campaigning against other Anatolian Muslim powers, even as it also seeks to
legitimate the Halveti shaykhs by having them win his approval and trust. The
overtones in the narratives lend further support to the conclusion that the Halveti
shaykhs had tense relations with an expanding Ottoman state as they extended
their reach across the region.
We do not know when Cemâl el-Halvetî came to Erzincan, nor do our hagi-
ographies give us much information about his activities there. However, Hulvî
does include a narrative about another follower of Muhammad el-Erzincânî that

strongly suggests that Cemâl was not his primary choice as a successor. Perhaps
because Pîr Ahmed was engaged with the Ottomans, another successor by the
name of Pîr Fethullah (d. after 879/1474) took Muhammad el-Erzincânî’s place
after his death for a time. According to Hulvî’s discussion of him, however, one
of his acts of grace was that after his dervishes asked him about what to do fol-
lowing his death, he predicted that his funeral prayer would be given by someone
who would come from the mountains into town on the day of his death. The
shaykh then commanded his followers to accept that person as their successor.
It was as the shaykh predicted; however, after completing the funeral prayer and
its arrangements, the person disappeared again. His followers eventually identi-
fied the stranger as Cemâl el-Halvetî, who was at the time based in ʿAyntab to
the south. But when they sent envoys to call Cemâl to take their master’s place,
they found that Cemâl had performed an act of grace of his own. They arrived at
his lodge and asked the dervish in charge to see Cemâl, only to be told that they
could not because he was still in the final days of a forty-day retreat and had not
left the lodge for over a month. At that moment, it became clear to all involved
that Cemâl had transcended the fabric of time and space to perform the funeral
prayer, thus his immediate disappearance after its end.65 This narrative may
suggest that Cemâl succeeded to the leadership of Muhammad’s order in a more
indirect manner that the silsile would otherwise indicate.
When Cemâl did re-enter the historical spotlight once again, it would mark a
definitive moment in both Halveti and Ottoman history as a whole. In the years
following the defeat of the Akkoyunlu, Cemâl may have recognized the inevi-
tability of Ottoman rule and adopted a different approach to its growing power.
At some point after 880/1475, he emigrated to the provincial capital of Amasya,
which had become a center for the regional court of the future Ottoman sultan
Bayezid II. Shortly before the death of Sultan Mehmed II, Cemâl appears to have
attracted the attention of Bayezid and his allies. Amasya already had a Halveti
legacy in the form of the aforementioned Pîr İlyâs el-Amâsî, and Cemâl must
have found a welcoming environment for himself and his followers, since he was
given a position at the Hoca Sultan Tekke there.66 Given the fact that Bayezid
was not on terribly good terms with his father, who distrusted him and favored
his other sons, Cemâl may have recognized an opportunity to co-opt former
Ottoman adversaries by winning the support of their easternmost representatives.
A substantial number of both Halveti and other Ottoman histories record
what happened after the succession struggle for the Ottoman throne accelerated
in 886/1481. These accounts stress the participation of Cemâl el-Halvetî in the
events that would catapult Bayezid II to the throne. Bayezid knew full well
that Sultan Mehmed II’s grand vizier, Mehmed Paşa, had sided with Bayezid’s
rival Cem Sultan (d. 900/1495), who was based in recently conquered province

of Karaman, and he also knew that Mehmed Paşa had tried to undermine
Bayezid’s position at the court in İstanbul. At some point, Bayezid sent an
emissary to Cemâl to ask for his spiritual support in combating Mehmed Paşa’s
intrigues against him. Cemâl responded to these entreaties by noting that
Mehmed Paşa always wore a magic square talisman (vefk) to protect himself,
which had been drawn up for him by a prominent Zeyniye leader, Shaykh Vefâ
(d. 896/1491).67 Interestingly, this proves to be yet another point in which ten-
sions emerged between the early representatives of the Halvetiye and Zeyniye,
and suggests that the two may have been in competition for influence in
Anatolia in the period immediately following the Ottoman eastward expansion.
Cemâl confessed to Bayezid’s representatives that he could do nothing to
challenge the spiritual power of Shaykh Vefâ and his mastery of vefk, but that if
the Sultan would wait for thirty-three days, an important event would take place
and a way might be found to solve his problem. A month later, news of Sultan
Mehmed II’s death arrived, and the various contenders to the throne began to
mobilize their forces. Luckily for Bayezid’s faction, Mehmed Paşa accidentally
rubbed off some of the writing on his talisman, and was forced to give it to one
of Shaykh Vefâ’s dervishes for repair. Shortly thereafter, the janissaries rose up
and murdered him in İstanbul, clearing the way for Bayezid’s eventual accession
to the throne.68
The story of the vefk talisman proved popular among later Ottoman historians,
and even makes an appearance in Gelibolulu Mustafa ʿAlî’s Künhüʾl-Ahbâr.69
This should not distract modern historians from additional contributions that
Cemâl el-Halvetî was in a position to make in order to contribute to Bayezid’s
eventual victory. Given the evidence in his biographical corpus, his help may
well have had a practical and political side to it. Cemâl likely had connections
within the circles of mystics and ʿulema in the region of Karaman who might
be persuaded to rethink their support for the candidacy of Cem Sultan and his
partisans. Thus, he was a natural choice for Bayezid to help advance his own
cause. With his family connections and years of travel in the regions of the
former Karamanid provinces, his association to the region were still strong. Still,
this did not mean that Cemâl’s work on behalf of Bayezid met with immediate
success, and some hagiographies imply this by a curious set of references to a set
of supernatural encounters.
While the hagiographical accounts situate a debate between Cemâl and a
number of Karaman-based religious figures in an otherworldly context, the
source for the account comes from Tâcizâde Caʿfer Çelebi (d. 920/1514), who
served as both an Ottoman kazʿasker and the keeper of the royal seal (nişancı).70
According to him, after Bayezid’s request for help, Cemâl entered the unseen
world and sought out the Karamanid shaykhs to try and turn them against the

plans of Cem and his vizier. His initial attempt to sway them was unsuccessful
and the Karamanid shaykhs threw flaming embers at him. Cemâl did not escape
the conflict entirely unscathed, for he witnessed one of his daughters being hit
by an ember during the conflict; two days later, the young girl contracted a high
fever and died. Cemâl then confronted the shaykhs a second time, and asked
them why they persisted in supporting an oppressor, for Mehmed Paşa had
refused to respect the inviolability of the pious foundations (vakıflar) under his
administration. Instead, he had confiscated many of them for the royal treasury
in order to help pay for Sultan Mehmed II’s campaigns.
These narratives suggest that Cemâl may well have acted as an intermediary
on Bayezid’s behalf, who knew how to tap into the deep and growing unpopular-
ity of Mehmed II’s incessant military activity by the closing years of his reign,
especially among the recently conquered populations of Karaman. Moreover,
he could adeptly deploy an argument that could win the support of Sufis and
scholars alike in undermining Cem’s candidacy for the throne.71 According to
the hagiographies, the persuasiveness of Cemâl’s arguments led all the shaykhs,
with the notable exception of the Zeyniye leader Shaykh Vefâ, to withdraw their
support from Cem and his vizier.72 In sum, Cemâl played at least some role in
helping Bayezid’s partisans undermine Cem’s support, for the dispute over the
pious foundations can be corroborated by other historical sources as an important
element in the outcome of the struggle. Many of the religious scholars, Sufi or
otherwise, depended on these types of revenues for the support of their institu-
tions and families.73
The victory of Sultan Bayezid, coupled with the support he received from
Cemâl, allowed the Halveti order to become one of the most prominent Sufi
groups in the rapidly expanding Ottoman Empire. While the hagiographies
narrate that the newly influential Cemâl and his followers were initially hesi-
tant about their new patron’s entreaties to join him in the capital, the balance
of power had clearly shifted with the change of ruler. While Mehmed II had
often found Halveti representatives among his opponents, his successor Bayezid
emerged from very different circles from those that rejected his father’s legacy
and opened the door for a shift in the order’s fortunes. After a brief interlude,
Cemâl and his followers did eventually settle in the capital, and were given the
area occupied by a former Christian church in the southwestern part of the city.
They subsequently converted this structure into a mosque, which still stands
today and is known as the Sünbül Efendi mosque, with the support of Bayezid’s
grand vizier, Koca Mustafa Paşa.74
Still, Cemâl and his followers did have their detractors. Molla ʿArab, who
was noted for his opposition to ʿAlâeddîn el-Halvetî, re-emerges in this context,
and he may also have targeted Cemâl and his followers over their practices; we

will return to those issues later. Some hagiographical narratives also suggest
that even his own successor to leadership in the order, Sünbül Sinân Efendi,
initially kept company with scholars who rejected Cemâl’s Sufi orientation
and criticized him.75 Moreover, the hagiographies seem to be at pains to stress
Cemâl’s unwillingness to accept any financial support as part of his residence
in the capital. In one narrative, he and his followers could not cross over the
Bosphorus to enter the capital until all Cemâl’s dervishes renounced all their
wealth. Cemâl had to seek out the follower who had withheld a few coins before
the storm blocking their passage would subside. In another, he refused to take up
residence in the building that Koca Mustafa Paşa had set aside for him until he
was guaranteed that no state salary would be given to himself or his followers.
Finally, in a supreme act of self-sacrifice, Cemâl later died on the pilgrimage,
where he was sent to offer prayers of supplication to end an outbreak of plague
and earthquakes that afflicted the capital, reflecting events which probably took
place in 905/1499.76 Still, despite the need for hagiographical defense of Cemâl’s
close relationship with Bayezid II, he and his successors had laid a foundation
that would guarantee a long and prosperous future for the Halveti order in the
Ottoman domains.
A final set of sources have survived that complement our picture of Cemâl’s
personality, in that some of his writings have survived to give us some addi-
tional insight into his character and the mystical thought that he espoused. One
important point is that these surviving manuscripts were written almost entirely
in Arabic, and were aimed at a well-educated scholarly audience. For example,
one tract that Cemâl wrote was a commentary on the reported proverbs of the
first caliph, Abu Bakr. It went on to imbue each of Abu Bakr’s supposed state-
ments with a mystical meaning, which Cemâl subsequently interpreted in the
context of a couplet of Persian poetry by famed literary and mystical figures
such as Celâleddîn Rûmî and ʿAbd al-Rahman Jâmî.77 Another tract, which
Cemâl claimed to transmit on the authority of Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî himself, sought
to define the basic Muslim ritual of ablutions before prayer with an additional,
deep spiritual philosophy aimed at cleansing the soul.78 This type of mystical
philosophy, written in the learned languages of the period, assumed an audience
of educated elites who knew Arabic and Persian, and only in much later times
do we see some of Cemâl’s tracts being translated into Turkish for a wider audi-
ence.79 Even Cemâl’s successor, Sünbül Sinân Efendi, wrote his only major tract
in Arabic during the early decades of the tenth/sixteenth century.80 It was only
in the later decades of the tenth/sixteenth century that prominent Halveti leaders
began to produce works in Turkish as a means of broadening the audience for
them.
When it became clear that he would not complete his pilgrimage to the holy

cities in 905/1499, and as he lay dying at a pilgrimage station in the area of
Tabûk, Cemâl el-Halvetî sent for one of his successors, Sünbül Sinân Efendi
(d. 935/1529), to come to his side to receive the symbols of leadership for the
Halveti order in İstanbul. To some extent, this may have been a matter of con-
venience, since Cemâl had sent Sünbül Efendi to the Mamluk capital of Cairo to
spread the order there. He may have been the closest potential successor of high
rank whom Cemâl felt was ready to take his place. Whatever the reason, the tran-
sition set the Cemâliye branch of the order on a somewhat different trajectory
of succession than the Gülşeniye, in that hereditary succession was not nearly as
prominent in this branch of the order. Sünbül Sinân had come from Merzifon,
and shared no family origins or relationship with Cemâl. Nevertheless, Cemâl
did not seem entirely unconcerned about this issue, for he made it known in his
will that part of the succession would entail that his daughter Sâfiye Hâtûn be
married to Sünbul Efendi.81 Cemâl’s prominent origins probably protected him
to some extent from attacks on his person, and he may have hoped to protect
Sünbül Efendi by tying him into his own family tree. The strategy worked, for
Sünbül Efendi returned to the Koca Mustafa Paşa lodge shortly thereafter to be
greeted by over 300 of the order’s followers.82
.
Growing tensions over Halveti power in the Ottoman
Empire from the tenth/sixteenth century
With the death of prominent founding figures like Cemâl el-Halvetî and
İbrâhîm-i Gülşenî by the early tenth/sixteenth century, the torch of Halveti lead-
ership passed on to new generations. With the conquest of the Mamluk Sultanate
by the Ottomans, and the completion of the migration of various Halveti groups
from the Safavid Empire into the Ottoman domains, the sub-branches of the
order went on to proliferate to the point where a single study cannot encompass
them all. Thorough examinations of the various sub-branches of the Halveti
remain a desideratum for future research.83 Leaving this issue aside, however, it
is necessary to note the problems that surrounded the order’s rise to power in the
Ottoman context before proceeding to the Şaʿbâniye branch of the Halveti order.
The close association of Cemâl el-Halvetî and his followers enjoyed with
the court of Sultan Bayezid II appeared to have created political tensions for
the order. With the weakening of Sultan Bayezid II’s rule under Safavid and
Kızılbâş attacks, followed by his death in 918/1512, a power struggle emerged
between three of his sons: Ahmed, Korkud, and Selim. Bayezid himself
favored Ahmed over his eldest son Korkud and his youngest son Selim; most
of the religious leaders of the time, including the Halveti leadership, probably
shared Bayezid’s views on the succession. Yet in the chaos that surrounded the

succession struggle, Selîm demonstrated shrewd tactics and won the support of
much of the military, and went on to gain control of the throne.84 Disturbed by
his father’s overly cautious attitude toward the increasingly aggressive Safavids,
Selîm would go on to launch a number of campaigns that would nearly double
the size of the Ottoman Empire and permanently transform the power structure
of the Islamic world.
In the short run, Selîm’s dazzling victories over his opponents, both foreign
and domestic, did not prove beneficial to the Halveti cause. Shortly after his
accession, Selîm imprisoned and executed the grand vizier Koca Mustafa Paşa,
whose patronage had helped to establish Cemâl el-Halvetî and his order in the
capital, on account of the former grand vizier’s questionable loyalties. This
turn of events quickly proved threatening for Sünbül Efendi and his followers.
As part of his attacks on Mustafa Paşa’s legacy and supporters, Selîm moved
against the mosque complex that Mustafa Paşa had endowed, and even sought to
demolish part of the mosque by removing its supporting columns as construction
material for an addition to his palace.
The hagiographies suggest that this plan led to a tense confrontation between
Sünbül Efendi’s following and the sultan in the streets before the mosque. Given
that the mosque still exists, we know that the upshot of the encounter was that
Sünbül Efendi and his allies convinced Selîm not to carry out his plan. Hulvî nar-
rated that Sünbül Sinân cleverly allowed the new ruler to save face by allowing
him to carry out his threat, at least in part, by suggesting that Selîm destroy the
chimney flues on top of the Halveti lodge rather than accept the public humili-
ation of being forced to rescind his own command. Having proved his loyalty
to the new sultan, Selîm responded by repenting of his action and allowing the
Halveti dervishes to continue their activities.85
Narratives like these suggest that by the time Selîm came to power, the
Cemâliye branch of the order had become well entrenched enough to weather
the political storm that their links to the previous regime had generated.
Nevertheless, this confrontation must also be set within the context of the early
tenth/sixteenth-century Ottoman expansion. Selîm and his allies were much
more ruthless toward the Safavids and their supporters, whom they deemed to
be heretics. Selîm launched a massive campaign against suspected Safavid sym-
pathizers in Anatolia and elsewhere that intertwined with his victory over Shah
İsmâʿîl in 920/1514. Much of the scholarly activity of the period was aimed at
extirpating heretical beliefs and practices, and Sufi orders like the Halveti who
came from eastern origins and had nominal links to Safavid ancestors came
under increased scrutiny, and could become targets of suspicion in the eyes of
the Ottoman rulers and scholars.86 The biographical notices on Sünbül Efendi
suggest that he and his followers suffered a decline in their political fortunes;

some scholars even sought legal decisions that sought to declare Halveti ceremo-
nies illegitimate.87 Still, trying to draw black and white battle lines over these
issues can be difficult for the historian. We also know that Selîm went on to
restore the tomb of the renowned mystic İbn al-ʿArabî in Damascus in 923/1517,
from whom the Halveti drew some of their own inspiration.88 Given this activity
on the part of the reigning sultan after his rule had become well established and
legitimized by his conquests, it is likely that the gap between the sultan and mys-
tical groups like the Halveti could have narrowed considerably once Ottoman
victory was assured.
The success of Selîm’s conquests, followed by the continuing success of his
son Süleymân, may have reduced the pressure on the Halveti order thereafter,
so they survived this first wave of persecution. However, one lasting legacy
of this encounter appears to have been to increase Halveti reticence toward
building overly close links with political power. One result was that not all
prominent Halvetis come across as universally favorable toward the Ottoman
leadership. During later times of trouble in the long reign of Süleymân, such
as the conflict in the 950s/1550s and 960s/1560s with his potential heirs to the
throne, Mustafa and Bayezid, there is evidence that some prominent shaykhs
were imprisoned for suspected opposition to the sultan, perhaps because they
were thought to favor one his sons. A good example of this was the figure of
Gazanfer Dede, a Bayrâmî shaykh who was respected by later Halveti leaders.
One of the biographical narratives about him takes place in the context of a
prison cell during the reign of Süleymân after he had been brought to İstanbul
for cross-examination.89 Moreover, one of the later Sünbüliye shaykhs, Yaʿkûb
el-Germiyânî, fled a public assembly that Sultan Süleymân had organized to
pray for relief from drought. When the assembly called upon Yaʿkûb to lead
the prayer, he instead fled the scene, which was interpreted as disobedience to
the ruler’s order.90
Still, these tensions did not stop the order from expanding its membership
and range. The Cemâliye/Sünbüliye Halveti shaykhs continued to uphold the
strategies pioneered by Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî and his descendants, and many of
the Halveti successors were increasingly expected to complete their training
by being sent to provincial areas to build the order’s following (such as Sünbül
Efendi in Egypt). An evocative description of this process appears in a bio-
graphical notice on Sünbül Efendi’s successor, Muslihuddîn Merkez Efendi (d.
959/1552). He was first sent by Sünbül Efendi to teach in a complex built by
Hafsa Sultan, the mother of Sultan Süleyman.91 However, shaykhs like Merkez
Efendi apparently did not maintain a fixed residence in the place where they had
been assigned, and parts of his biography discuss how he frequently traveled into
the countryside in western Anatolia to interact with local communities there:

It is related that while going on a journey, if Merkez were to see a peasant, he
would go to him, ask “do you know the faith,” and would explain the conditions
and duties of prayer. He would then scatter the seeds of knowledge among the
fields of the heart, saying [things like]: “[The way to do it] is so-and-so and such
and such. It is prayer that separates Islam from unbelief, and one who neglects
prayer is more useless than an unbeliever,” [and] “verily the prayers are incum-
bent on the believers in a fixed book,” [followed by the] poem, “upon the believ-
ers the fixed book assigned prayers/those who don’t do it are detested in the
two worlds,” [and] “beware, don’t let these farm animals lack for food, water or
provisions; don’t load them with more than they can bear; don’t strike them with
endless blows. [To] that the scholars say, ‘the striker of animals runs up a bill, it
garners nought but its equal [in the afterlife],’” [and] “in this place full of seeds
you are walk around, your intent should be to revive [empty land] and to make it
a benefit to the male and female believers . . .”92
Here, it becomes clear that Halveti shaykhs like Merkez Efendi burnished their
credentials as Sufi leaders by logging many years in the countryside spreading
their teachings, and this was often quite basic in nature. The passage above sug-
gests that they sought to guide the peasantry on how to best pursue their endeav-
ors in their fields, and one wonders how the peasants might have perceived these
outsiders. In this case, the hagiography makes a backhanded reference suggest-
ing that wandering Sufis like Merkez Efendi might not have always been viewed
positively:
It is related that one Friday the shaykh was in Balikesir [a town directly west of
Bursa], and he ascended to the pulpit after the prayer and commenced giving
advice. It was harvest time and the people got up in droves and went out, and they
themselves took him lightly on account of their being devotees of Emir Sultan in
Bursa, thinking “he’s a Halvetî shaykh in any case.” The noble custom of the late
[Merkez Efendi] was to close his eyes in the midst of preaching. He commenced
immediately by saying, “I take refuge with God.” The guardian of the mosque lis-
tened for awhile, then he also had business outside. He wanted to depart, and he
brought the keys and called out, “Shaykh Efendi, when you leave, you should not
leave the mosque open; you should lock it up.” Merkez opened his eyes and saw
that not a single person remained in the mosque. He closed his eyes again and
said to the mosque guardian: “Depart, come on and go; I began with the intent of
relating the commentary of several of the blessed verses. The angels are desiring
a teaching session. It is fixed to the section ‘and the angels surrounded them.’”
He continued speaking until the following afternoon prayer. By this sincerity
of the late [Merkez Efendi], the devotion of those who saw his [mystical] states

was also increased. He used to preach to his dervishes, saying “[be a] wandering
dervish (abdâl),” and if he were to go to a place, he would go alone, and the light
of sainthood and the marks of guidance were glittering on his face.93
In this case, we get a strong hint that the wandering Halveti shaykhs sometimes
had to contend with other strongly entrenched Sufi traditions in their region,
such as the following built by Emîr Sultân (d. 833/1430), a son-in-law of the
fourth Ottoman sultan Bayezid I. Building a following in the countryside was no
easy task, and success in doing so could provide a means by which individual
Halveti shaykhs would gain legitimacy that would later allow them to succeed
to the head of their order. The career of Yaʿkûb el-Germiyânî followed the same
pattern, for before acceding to the leadership of the Sünbüliye branch of the
order upon the death of Merkez Efendi in 959/1552, he served as a shaykh in
Yanya (today’s Ioannina in northwestern Greece) for several years before being
recalled to İstanbul in 940/1534.94
Moreover, not all Halveti shaykhs were suspect in the eyes of the Ottoman
rulers, and the impact of the Safavid threat did not necessarily damage the
Halveti order. After all, the Halveti shaykhs could easily point to the anti-Halveti
persecutions of the Safavids, which had led many prominent Halveti leaders and
their followers to flee westward and settle in Ottoman domains. Not only did the
Egyptian branches of the Halveti order, in the form of the Gülşeniye and others,
rise to prominence in this way, but increasingly powerful Halveti sub-branches,
such as the Sivâsiye, also became prominent players in the region after fleeing
the Safavid borderlands in the mid-tenth/sixteenth century. Many Persian and
Azerbaijanî exiles from the east had settled in Ottoman domains, and some
served both shaykh and sultan. By the end of Süleyman’s reign, Halveti shaykhs
had begun to gain official favor. In one account, Merkez Efendi was chosen by
Süleymân to act as an official representative in a campaign to recapture Corfu,
and another prominent Halveti shaykh played an integral role in convincing
Süleyman to undertake his final military campaign to the west in 973/1566.95
The Halveti ascendancy accelerated after the death of Süleymân and culmi-
nated in the reign of Sultan Murad III (d. 1003/1595), who developed a number
of special relationships with prominent Halveti Sufis. In fact, the high point of
Halveti ascendancy within the Ottoman Empire in a political sense may not have
come with the reign of Bayezid II, but with Murad III. For both supporters and
detractors alike, one of the most influential figures at Murad’s court was the
enigmatic Shaykh Şücâʿuddîn, a Sufi who claimed membership in the Şaʿbâniye
order.96 A substantial amount of Murad’s personal correspondence with Shaykh
Şücâʿ over a number of years was recompiled into a book and survives in a
single copy, and the correspondence demonstrates a substantial commitment

on Murad’s part to reporting his dream visions, mystical experiences, and fears
to the shaykh.97 We will learn more about Şücâʿ’s controversial legacy for the
Şaʿbâniye order later.
However, Shaykh Şücâʿ was not the only Halveti shaykh to attain a promi-
nent position during Murad’s reign. The son of the Sünbüliye shaykh Yaʿkûb el-
Germiyânî, Sinaneddin b. Yusuf b. Yaʿkub, also caught the attention of Murad
shortly before he acceded to the throne in 981/1574, as evidenced by a short
tract he wrote for him entitled Tazlîluʾl-taʾvîl.98 Shortly thereafter, he presented
the sultan with a short work called the Tezkîretüʾl-Halvetiye, a short history
of the Halveti shaykhs of the Sünbüliye branch of the order and their origins.
Written partly as an apologetic for the aforementioned disobedience of his father,
Yaʿkûb, late in the reign of Murad’s grandfather, the success of the work even-
tually led Sinâneddîn to request the prominent position of Shaykh al-Haram in
Medina.99 Based on a subsequent letter dispatched to the sultan from Medina a
few years later, we know that the request was subsequently granted, and that the
two men maintained their connections up to the time of Sinâneddîn’s death in
989/1581.100
Moreover, we also know that Muhyî-yi Gülşenî, the son-in-law of the
Gülşeniye shaykh Ahmed el-Hiyâlî in Cairo and author of the massive hagiog-
raphy for İbrâhîm-i Gülşenî, came to İstanbul sometime in 984/1577. While he
came primarily to lodge a complaint about lands that had been usurped from him
by a judge there, Murad soon tapped this rising Halveti figure as well, and had
Muhyî write an abridged handbook of ethics for him entitled the Sîret-i Murâd-ı
Cihân in return for his intercession in Muhyî’s case.101 The work proved to be
an interesting intellectual exercise on at least one front. While much of the work
represented an abridged version of Nâsir al-Dîn Tûsî’s Nasirean Ethics, Muhyî
made at least one major change. Instead of retaining the traditional philosophical
division of personal ethics, household ethics, and the ethics of society as fol-
lowed by previous authors, Muhyî chose to replace the traditional second section
of household ethics with a section relating to Sufism.102
All of this suggests a sustained campaign on the part of Murad III to inject
a strong Sufi element into his style of ruling from the very earliest period of
his accession to the throne, and this Sufi element included a number of Halveti
shaykhs. Perhaps as a result of this ascendancy, over the course of the latter half
of the tenth/sixteenth and early eleventh/seventeenth centuries, the descendants
of the first wave of Halveti leaders attained some of the highest and most pub-
licly visible posts as preachers in various Ottoman religious institutions through-
out the empire. Yet as the order reached the height of its influence in Ottoman
circles, the empire came to confront political, economic, and social turmoil that
led to a growing backlash against Sufi orders such as the Halvetiye. Oddly, this

backlash was not confined just to the opponents of the Halveti shaykhs. It is note-
worthy that the three aforementioned shaykhs, Şücâʿ, Sinâneddîn, and Muhyî,
all came to receive a skeptical treatment in the wake of their involvement with
the Ottoman state. Şücâʿ’s contemporaries complained bitterly about his influ-
ence, and later Sufi biographers criticized Murad’s dabbling in Sufism as unsuc-
cessful.103 In addition, both Sinâneddîn and Muhyî were later denied the most
prominent leadership roles in their respective branches of the order by Hulvî
in his ordering of the Lemezât, and his accounts of the two figures both betray
a critical view of their activities. In his narrative, Sinâneddîn was portrayed as
having to repent of a sinful youth through the agency of his father, while Muhyî
was denied the succession to the leadership of the Gülşeniye because he was too
fond of traveling about the Empire.104
The inability of many Halveti shaykhs to reconcile their commitment to
otherworldly pursuits with attempts by Ottoman dignitaries to place them in
prominent positions in their society put them at a disadvantage against a far
more troubling trend of rising hostility toward themselves and their followers.
One of the most important manifestations of this turmoil was the emergence of
what would come to be called the Kâdızâdeli movement, which took its name
from a puritanical scholar by the name of Kâdızâde Mehmed (d. 1045/1635).
We now know that momentum for this movement began much earlier than
Kâdızâde’s appearance on the historical scene, but from the end of the tenth/
sixteenth century onward, it gained strength and began to spread rapidly across
the Ottoman Empire, reaching its peak at the end of the eleventh/seventeenth
century during the long reign of Sultan Mehmed IV.
The basic ideology of the Kâdızâdeli movement was an attempt to “purify”
Islamic belief and practice by rooting out all of the “innovations” that had cor-
rupted the Muslim community since the days of the Prophet Muhammad. In this
sense, the movement is often described as a precursor to modern-day Islamic
“fundamentalist” movements in the Near East. The Kadızâdelis became increas-
ingly vicious in their attacks on religio-mystical orders. In addition, they chal-
lenged many of their fellow Ottoman Muslims to defend the validity of practices
as mundane as drinking coffee, smoking tobacco, or even shaking hands.
The Kâdızâdeli movement, in the course of its attacks on Ottoman religious
institutions and figures during the eleventh/seventeenth century, reserved its
special ire for the followers of Halveti doctrines and practices. Kâdızâdeli
leaders took aim at their ceremonies and the lodges in which they practiced them,
and sought to have individual Halveti leaders removed from high positions in the
religious and political hierarchy, disregarding their claims to be sacred interme-
diaries between the believers and God. In some cases, they even succeeded in
having Halveti lodges torn down, often by inciting mob action against them.105

Recent studies, such as those of Madeline Zilfi, have suggested that many of
the issues over which the two groups clashed derived directly from the social and
economic context of the Ottoman Empire at the time. Demographic pressures
and economic strains caused by a growing population, along with long wars with
the Habsburgs in Europe and the Safavids in Iran led to population pressure upon
the land and the growing inability of the state to pay its own troops and officials.
One result of these problems was that too many people were being trained in
the scholarly hierarchy for too few actual positions. Moreover, the spread of
firearms among mercenary forces and the rise of the notorious Celâlî revolts that
intensified by the end of the tenth/sixteenth century also led to disruptions in the
Anatolian countryside, especially as inflation made it more and more difficult for
Ottoman officials to pay their troops and rebellions against state officials grew
more frequent. The collapse of order in many parts of the Ottoman countryside
led many rural or small-town scholars to be displaced; some of these subse-
quently fled to the larger cities to swell the ranks of disaffected leaders increas-
ingly sympathetic to the Kâdızâdeli reform program. The height of Halveti
ascendency ran headlong into this increasingly disaffected and hostile group of
leaders during the height of what came to be called the “Seventeenth-Century
Crisis” throughout much of the wider world. Sufi leaders among the various
branches of the Halvetiye, who had been granted a number of prominent posts,
found themselves in competition for posts with displaced migrants or hostile
skeptics. Thus, one facet of the emerging Kâdızâdeli–Halvetî conflict from the
end of the tenth/sixteenth century onward was economic and political in nature;
that is, competition over limited positions in an era of economic scarcity.
Yet the Kâdızâdeli forces also gave voice to concerns that had nothing
directly to do with these problems, and to dismiss the movement as simply
another cynical attempt at manipulating the Ottoman power structure to the
advantage of a particular interest group, as some scholars have suggested, can
limit our understanding of its full impact.106 Kâdızâdeli polemic also extended
to seemingly obscure doctrinal matters, such as whether or not it was considered
righteous to curse the name of the late first/seventh-century Umayyad caliph
Yazîd b. Muʾawiya (d. 63/683), who was responsible for the killing of Husayn,
son of the early caliph and revered Muslim leader ʿAlî. Interestingly enough,
the Ottoman historian Naʿîmâ (d. 1128/1716), writing in the decades after the
Kâdızâdeli heyday, described the movement not as a novelty, but as a manifes-
tation of a recurring ideological and social problem that had troubled Islamic
civilization almost from its very inception,107 and a close examination of Halveti
history, as we shall see, lends some support to the historian’s claims.
Ultimately, the Kâdızâdeli movement did not succeed in its goals of eradi-
cating groups like the Halveti and purifying Ottoman society of everything they

defined as “innovations.” Still, this does not mean they were ineffective, and how
the branches of the Halveti order coped with hostile forces in their social and
intellectual environment is a key part of the history of mysticism and Ottoman
religious life during the early modern period. The formation and subsequent
development of the Şaʿbâniye order is therefore an excellent case study of how
the branches of the order evolved in response to the threats that arose during the
transitional periods of the Ottoman Empire’s history.
***
Given the rapid proliferation of the various branches of the Halveti order through-
out the Ottoman Empire, and the prominence that they had achieved in some of
its major urban centers, the historical picture of the Halveti order as a whole
becomes increasingly fragmented and kaleidoscopic, much like the history of the
Ottoman enterprise as a whole. As research for this study progressed, it became
increasingly clear that a micro-historical approach aimed at sub-branches of
the order in Ottoman society would be more effective in conveying the world
in which Halveti leaders and devotees operated. In the course of research in
Ottoman libraries, an especially rich treasure trove of material emerged about a
particular sub-branch of the order whose activities intersected with many of the
historical trends discussed in this chapter. This sub-branch, which came to be
called the Şaʿbâniye after the name of their founder Şaʿbân-ı Veli, established
itself in Kastamonu from the tenth/sixteenth century onward. From its modest
Black Sea mountain roots, it would later emerge as a major Halveti group with
branches extending from the Ottoman capital to the Balkans and beyond.
Perhaps frustratingly, a study of the Şaʿbâniye will mimic some of the pat-
terns established up to this point. Whereas in the early stages, we can piece
together a fairly full picture of the order’s activities when they represented a
smaller group of leaders and devotees, by the latter stages of the order’s evolu-
tion, the narrative will once again fragment down to very specific personalities
and their followers who operated in a much wider social, political, and religious
network than can fully be grasped. Despite these limitations, however, the story
of the Şaʿbâniye and their expansion, however incomplete, provides an invalu-
able inside look at the way in which the Halveti legacy came to shape Ottoman
society and culture – or alternatively, be shaped by it.
Notes
1 Notably, earlier studies begin their analysis from this point in time; see BGM, p. 277, for
example.

2 A good example of this phenomenon is discussed in the biography of the Halveti shaykh,
İbrâhîm-i Gülşenî, see MİG, pp. 23–5; see also the remarks of Carter Vaughn Findley,
The Turks in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 102–3.
3 For instance, the great Persian scholar and poet, ʿAbd al-Rahman Jâmî (d. 898/1492)
was invited to the court at İstanbul by Sultan Mehmed II during the 1470s while he was
making the pilgrimage to the Hijaz; however, he rejected the offer, probably because
he viewed the emerging Ottoman state as a backwater compared to his own region; see
ʿAbd al-Wâsiʿ Nizâmî-ye Bâharzî, Maqâmât-e Jâmî, ed. Najîb Mâyil Harawî (Tehran:
Nashr-e Nay, 1377/1999), p. 183. (I thank Ertuğrul Ökten for the reference.)
4 Hulvî does mention one Gülşenî shaykh, ʿAbdurrahman Gîlânî (d. 1008/1599), who
traveled from the province of Gilan to Egypt to receive his mystical training there from
two separate Gülşenî shaykhs. Subsequently, he was sent by the second to visit the tomb
of the Imam ʿAlî Rezâ in Mashhad, and later died in Herat. Whatever the possibilities
inherent in this potential outreach across the great divide between Ottoman and Safavid
realms, it should be noted that ʿAbdurrahman was a notable exception to an otherwise
general pattern of separation; see LH, fols 276b–7a (585).
5 LH, fol. 187a–b (379–380).
6 LH, fol. 192a–b (393); see also HSN, pp. 93–4 and LCH, 699. Hulvî claimed that he left
the position once Temür turned his attention to India, but he may instead be referring
to Temür’s final campaign to China that was never realized due to Temür’s death in
807/1405.
7 LH, fols 182b–4a (367–9). A third narrative, reflecting a recurrent trope in Halveti hagi-
ographies, also discusses how some of İzzeddîn’s followers who were merchants were
traveling by sea when a storm overtook them. They were saved when İzzeddîn miracu-
lously transported one of his dervishes to the scene to see to their safety.
8 LH, fols 185a–6a (373–4).
9 LH, fol. 186b (377–8).
10 LH, fol. 187b (381–2).
11 LH, fols 188b and 189b (382–4).
12 Being a known rival of the Halveti shaykhs by the end of the ninth/fifteenth century in
the Ottoman context, the introduction of the founder of the Zeyniye order into this narra-
tive may reflect subsequent tensions between the two orders; for more on this, see RÖ-Z,
p. 30.
13 The first account appears in the biography of Pîr İlyâs himself, the second more complex
narrative appears as part of the biography of Sadreddîn; see LH, fols 188b–9a and
192a–b (383 and 393).
14 Pîrzâde’s death date as given by Hulvî in his biography of Pîrzâde cannot be correct, for
in another part of his work, Pîrzâde appears as an active figure after his father’s death in
860/1456; compare LH, fols 191b and 195b (389 and 398).
15 In an earlier article, I had mis-identified this figure as a member of the Akkoyunlu family,
Khalîl Beg (d. 883/1478); however, I have now realized that the earlier context into
which the narrative falls does not allow for this possibility; see LH, fol. 190b (388) and
JC-IPP, p. 131. For more on the Şirvânşâh ruling house and its longevity in the region,
see W. Barthold and C. E. Bosworth, “Shîrwân Shâh, Sharwân Shâh,” EI2, vol. 9, p. 488.
16 These narratives are analyzed in greater detail in JC-IPP, pp. 131–2; compare also LH,
fols 190a–91b and 195b (387–8 and 398).
17 Barthold and Bosworth, “Shîrwân Shâh, Sharwân Shâh,” EI2, vol. 9, p. 488.

18 For more on this position, see A. Havemann, “Nakîb al-Ashrâf,” EI2, vol. 7, p. 926.
19 LH, fols 193a–5b (395–8).
20 Mehmet Rıhtım examines the various sources that discuss this issue, and argues in his
study of Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî that Sadrüddîn must have died a lot earlier than Hulvî indi-
cated in his work; see MRSY, pp. 17 and 21–3.
21 MRSY, pp. 30–3; see also the illustrations on pp. 234–5.
22 LH, fol. 195a (398); although given his motives in writing the Lemezât, we should not
discount the possibility that Hulvî recorded this as an explanatory device to legitimize
the diversity of the different Halveti sub-branches in his own day, or make an argument
for greater Halveti unity based on the suggestion that the founding figure of Yahyâ was
responsible for that very diversity.
23 MRSY, pp. 122–8.
24 MRSY, p. 106.
25 LH, fol. 197b (403).
26 Once again, Hulvî’s dates of death for Pîr Şükrullah do not match up with the narratives
connected with him; he gives the date of death as 868/1464 which would be before the
death of Yahyâ and would not have allowed him to contest the succession; note contra-
dictions in biographical entry for Şükrullah in LH, fols 197a–8b (403–5).
27 Compare the accounts in MN-Hİ, pp. 256–60 with LH, fols 197b–8a (403–4).
28 See also my earlier remarks on these issues in JC-IPP, p. 132.
29 MSN, p. 288.
30 MRSY, p. 158; see also LH, fol. 248b (519).
31 A full study of the Sivâsiye remains to be done, which is somewhat curious given
their documented role in the Halveti conflict with the Kâdızâdeli movement, cf. the
work of Madeline Zilfi in the bibliography. However, see Cengiz Gündoğdu, Bir Türk
Mutasavvıfı Abdülmecîd Sivâsî (971/1563–1049/1639): Hayatı Eserleri ve Tasavvufî
Görüşleri (Ankara: T. C. Kültür Bakanlığı, 2000), and the remarks in RÖ-OT, pp.
107–10.
32 See MİG, p. 249; and the discussion of this in JC-HWS, p. 57.
33 The narratives about this incident state that Rûşenî, while one day in a state of contem-
plation, found himself walking in a garden with the Prophet Muhammad. The Prophet
picked a rose and handed it to İbrâhîm-i Gülşenî, who was walking with them, and com-
manded that he bring it to Rûşenî. When Rûşenî emerged from his contemplative state,
he saw İbrâhîm coming in with a rose in hand to give him. Rûşenî recognized that the
Prophet had anointed his successor, and thereafter gave him the name “Gülşenî” after the
rose-giving incident. See LH, fol. 251b in margin (525) and NVA, p. 67. Interestingly,
this story does not appear in Muhyî-yi Gülşenî’s biography of İbrâhîm-i Gülşenî any-
where, and their initial encounters are framed within the context of İbrâhîm’s duties as a
member of the Akkoyunlu entourage; see MİG, pp. 48–9 and 55–6.
34 Interestingly, this individual would later go on to become a tutor (lâlâ) to the future
Sultan Bayezid II, and rise to the rank of grand vizier shortly before his death; see Münir
Aktepe, “Çandarlı İbrahim Paşa,” DİA, v. 8, p. 214.
35 For more on Hızır and his importance in the Sufi traditions, see İlyas Çelebi and
Süleyman Uludağ, “Hızır,” DİA, v. 17, 406–11.
36 LH, fols 245a–6a (512–13).
37 LH, fol. 198b (407); Hulvî refers to him as ʿAlâeddîn er-Rûmî rather than ʿAlâeddîn
el-Halvetî.

38 LH, fols 198b–9a (407–8); see also the discussion of this incident in BGM, pp. 280–1,
which ties it to the later struggle over the succession of Bayezid II to the throne.
39 LH, fol. 199a–b (408); all of the incidents discussed in Hulvî also appear in abridged
form in LCH, p. 704. More will be said about Molla ʿArab’s intersection with the
Halveti order in Chapter 9.
40 For more on the trajectory of Akkoyunlu power under Uzun Hasan, see JW-CCE, pp.
78–123.
41 Hulvî refers to her as “Selçuk Hâtûn” and claims that she was also a descendant of the
Karakoyunlu leader Cihânşâh, but this is most likely erroneous; see the genealogical
charts in JW-CCE, pp. 208 and 211.
42 LH, fols 246a–247a (513–515); this may represent an allusion to an otherwise unknown
figure in the the Mushaʿshaʿ revolt in Khuzistan, see JW-CCE, 129.
43 İbrâhîm-i Gülşenî recalled Qâdı ʿÎsâ with fondness many years after going into exile in
Egypt; see MİG, pp. 80–1. See also the remarks about Qâdı ʿÎsâ’s important role in the
power structure of the Akkoyunlu state and its unraveling; JW-CCE, pp. 132 and 143–5.
44 See, for example, MİG, pp. 218–20.
45 The story of İbrâhîm’s pilgrimage and the tensions that accompanied it in the final
decade of the ninth/fifteenth century can be found in MİG, pp. 227–54.
46 Side Emre, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, was in the process of com-
pleting a study of this period at the time this book went to press, but I was not able to
consult it; see Side Emre, “İbrâhîm-i Gülşenî (1442–1534), Founder of the Gülşeniye
Order of Dervishes in Egypt: Saint, Heretic, and Political Dissident,” unpublished
Ph.D. thesis, University of Chicago, 2009. In addition to MİG as previously referenced,
see also the preliminary study of Himmet Konur, İbrâhîm Gülşeni: Hayatı, Eserleri,
Tarikatı (İstanbul: İnsan Yayınları, 2000) and JC-HWS.
47 Reşat Öngören argues that these interconnections were already building during İbrâhîm’s
lifetime; see RÖ-OT, pp. 99–104.
48 A detailed presentation of these events can be found in JC-HWS, pp. 47–57.
49 MİG, pp. 314–17.
50 Waugh, Visionaries of Silence, pp. 30–1.
51 The last Gülşeniye shaykh to whom Hulvî refers reflects this hereditary descendant, as
his full name is given as “Shaykh İbrâhîm b. Shaykh Hasan brother of ʿAlî el-Safvetî b.
Ahmed el-Hiyâlî b. İbrâhîm el-Gülşenî,” see LH, fol. 277a (587). Oddly, our knowledge
of the post-Hulvî Gülşeniye and other Halveti branches in Egypt is surprisingly sketchy
until the emergence of reformist shaykhs like al-Bakrî (d. 1162/1749), al-Hifnî (d.
1181/1767), and al-Bayyumî (d. after 1144/1732), cf. Waugh, Visionaries of Silence, pp.
34–9. However, if the silsile of the later Hâletiye branch of the Gülşeniye, which later
established itself in Edirne, is any indication, the hereditary principle remained alive and
well; see Sâdık Vicdâni, Tarikatler ve Silsileleri (Tomâr-ı Turûk-ı ʿAliyye), trans. İrfan
Gündüz (İstanbul: Enderun Kitabevi, 1995), p. 203.
52 LH, fols 260b–1a and 272a–3a (543–5 and 571–2).
53 Gelibolulu Mustafâ ʿAlî, Mustafâ ʿAlî’s Description of Cairo of 1599: Text,
Transliteration, Translation, Notes, ed. Andreas Tietze (Vienna: Verlag Der
Österreichischen Akademie Der Wissenschaften, 1975), p. 47.
54 In a biography of the Gülşeniye shaykh Kâsım Efendi (d. 970/1563), a contemporary of
Ahmed el-Hiyâlî and Muhyî-yi Gülşenî, Hulvî described how a former Mamluk soldier
tried to secure Kâsım Efendi’s prayers for the defeat of the Ottomans, only to be rejected

by Kâsım, who foretold his eventual capture and execution at the hands of Ottoman
soldiers in Basra some years later. The apologetic in these types of narratives indirectly
indicates the idea that Gülşeniye shaykhs were viewed as potential fifth-column figures
even after the Ottoman conquest; see LH, fols 280b–1a (564).
55 For more on the various members of the Cemâlî family in Ottoman history, see Yusuf
Küçükdağ, II. Bayezid, Yavuz ve Kanûnî Devirlerinde Cemâlî Ailesi (İstanbul: Enderun
Kitabevi, 1995); I have also dealt with this subject at length in JC-IPP, pp. 121–41.
56 HSN, p. 284.
57 LH, fol. 208a (429); given the time frame, this suggests that Tâhirzâde may have had ties
to the early Safavid order during a time in which it was beginning to make its transition
away from Sunnism.
58 LCH, pp. 706–7; Lâmiʿî Çelebi met Cemâl el-Halvetî at least once and likely had access
to sources who could relate accounts about Cemâl’s life, assuming he did not learn of
these things from Cemâl himself, see p. 707. These accounts also appear in Hulvî as
well; see LH, fol. 208a–b (429).
59 Faruk Sümer noted in an article on the Karamanid dynasty that İbrâhîm Beg was deeply
distrustful of the children born to him by his Ottoman wife, a daughter of Sultan Çelebi
Mehmed I (d. 824/1421), and was eventually displaced by his Ottoman son Pîr Ahmed
shortly before his death. Given the Halveti connections with the Karamanids and their
strained relationship with the Ottomans at this time, the evidence strongly suggests that
Cemâl and other Halveti devotees would not have been happy with the changes; see
Faruk Sümer, “Karamânoghulları (Karmanids),” EI2, vol. 4, p. 619.
60 THV, fol. 11a; see also LH, fols 208b–9a (430).
61 LCH, p. 707.
62 See the analysis in JC-IPP, p. 135.
63 LH, fol. 201a (412); this may reflect a thinly veiled criticism of Uzun Hasan’s alliances
with the Venetians and his own attempts to claim that Muslims should not fight other
Muslims in the letters he sent to the Ottomans a few years previous, see JW-CCE, pp.
114–15.
64 LH, fols 203b–4b (417–18).
65 LH, fol. 205a–b (420–1).
66 RÖ-OT, p. 44.
67 For an extended discussion of the life and career of Shaykh Vefâ that includes a discus-
sion of this anecdote and Vefâ’s relations with Sultan Mehmed II and Sultan Bayezid II,
see RÖ-Z, pp. 130–154.
68 This narrative appears in THV, fols 11a–12a and LCH, pp. 707–8, among others.
69 KA, fols 177b–8b.
70 LCH, p. 707.
71 For a revisionist view on the activities of Mehmed II in regard to pious foundations and
the question of unpopular fiscal reforms in the years before his death, see Oktay Özel,
“Limits of the Almighty: Mehmed II’s ‘Land Reform’ Revisited,” JESHO 42:2 (1999),
226–46.
72 HSN, p. 285; see also a similar variant of this tale in LH, fol. 210a (432).
73 See, for example, the remarks of CI, p. 37; Halil İnalcik, The Ottoman Empire: The
Classical Age 1300–1600 (London: Phoenix Press, 1973), p. 30; this interpretation has
also been suggested by Küçükdağ, II. Bayezid, p. 22. For a more in-depth analysis of
Cemâl and other Sufi figures’ role in the conflict, see JC-IPP, pp. 136–9.

74 For more on the history of this structure and Mustafa Paşa’s role in constructing it for the
Cemâliye, see AYHC, pp. 220–7 and LH, fols 210b–11a (432–3).
75 LH, fols 215b–16b (445–6).
76 LH, as scattered over fols 210b–12a (432–5)
77 Cemâl el-Halvetî, a.k.a. “Çelebi Halife” (d. 905/1499), Risâlah fî tâʾwîl kalîmat Imâm
ʿalâ tahqîq Amîr al-Muʾminîn Abû Bakr as-Siddîq, Atatürk Kitaplığı, İstanbul, MS
Osman Ergin 1555/2; documents like this are yet more evidence that we must rethink
Martin’s claims about the early Halveti having a strong Shiʿite influence; see, for
example, BGM, pp. 284–5.
78 Cemâl el-Halvetî, a.k.a. “Çelebi Halife” (d. 905/1499), Risâlah fî tahqîq al-wudûʾ al-
bâtinî, Atatürk Kitaplığı, İstanbul, MS Osman Ergin 1683/1, fols 2a–9a.
79 See, for example, the thirteenth/nineteenth-century translation of the aforementioned
tract by one Veliyüddîn Maraşî Emirzâde, Vuzûʾ-ı bâtinî ve gusul hakkında risâle,
Atatürk Kitaplığı, İstanbul, MS Osman Ergin 1740.
80 See the many copies of Sünbül Sinan Efendi (d. 935/1529), Risâlat al-tahqîqiyya, as
noted in the bibliography in İstanbul’s Süleymaniye Library, along with their subsequent
Turkish translations from later eras.
81 See THV, fol. 19a–b; LH, fol. 212a–b (435).
82 THV, fol. 19a.
83 Substantial progress has been made in laying an infrastructure for future studies on this
front in the decade since I initiated my own research in the late 1990s, often but not invar-
iably by Turkish scholars; note the works of Nathalie Clayer, Reşat Öngören, Himmet
Konur, Cengiz Gündoğdu, Kerim Kara, Ahmet Ögke and others in the bibliography.
84 Halil İnalcık, “Selîm I,” EI2, vol. 9, p. 127.
85 LH, fol. 217a–b (447–8).
86 BGM, pp. 283–4.
87 See, for example, the narratives about Sünbül’s confrontations with a number of reli-
gious dignitaries in LH, fols 217b–20a (448–51); these will be discussed in more detail
in Chapter 8.
88 KA, fol. 265a.
89 This is one of the earliest Turkish language hagiographies, and recounts the narrative
of a scholar imprisoned together with the Halveti shaykh Gazanfer Dede. Despite dem-
onstrating a miraculous ability to allow himself and his cellmate to walk freely outside
the prison when the guards were not looking, the scholar recounted that Gazanfer Dede
voluntarily returned to the jail cell so that he would not violate the law by disobeying the
sultan’s order; see CAMA, fol. 10b. While Gazanfer Dede was eventually freed, others
were not so lucky, and several Halveti shaykhs were executed or subjected to inquisito-
rial processes during Süleyman’s reign, see the remarks in ZVM, pp. 306–27.
90 See THV, fol. 36a–b and the remarks in JC-GTH, pp. 914–15.
91 Reşat Öngören, “Merkez Efendi (ö 959/1552),” DİA, v. 29, p. 201.
92 THV, fol. 27a–b; I found parts of this passage were corrupt in the original, and had to be
reconstructed from the printed text of the manuscript in the Süleymaniye Library, MS
H. Hüsnü 808.
93 THV, fols 27b–8a.
94 THV, fols 32a–4a.
95 See LH, fol. 225b (464) and NC, p. 115.
96 THV, fol. 17a.

97 See SM-KM.
98 This earliest preserved sample of Sinâneddîn’s writings survives only in a single, poorly
copied manuscript; see Sinâneddîn b. Yusuf b. Yaʿkub (d. 989/1581), Tazlîluʾl-taʾvîl,
Süleymaniye Lib., İstanbul, MS Esad Efendi 3689/1.
99 LH, fol. 234a (485); see also the analysis in JC-GTH, pp. 913–15.
100 This tract has survived in multiple copies, most notably Sinâneddîn b. Yusuf b. Yaʿkub
(d. 989/1581), Tenbîhüʾl-gabi fî rüyʾatuʾn-nabi, Süleymaniye Lib., İstanbul, MS Yazma
Bağışlar 3431/1. Sinâneddîn also received acclaim as a specialist on performing the
pilgrimage, and also penned a guide to performing the pilgrimage that was re-copied
multiple times in later generations, the earliest copy can be found as Sinâneddîn b. Yusuf
b. Yaʿkub (d. 989/1581), Menâsik-i hacc-i şerîf, Süleymaniye Lib., İstanbul, MS Serez
1032.
101 For the circumstances surrounding the composition of the work, see Muhyî-yi Gülşenî
(d. 1014/1606), Sîret-i Murâd-ı Cihân, Süleymaniye Lib., İstanbul, MS Fatih 3496, fols
2a–4a.
102 Compare Muhyî-yi Gülşenî (d. 1014/1606), Sîret-i Murâd-ı Cihân, fols 31a–54a with
the structure of the earlier seventh/thirteenth-century work of Tûsî as translated by G. M.
Wickens, The Nasirean Ethics (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1964).
103 Gelibolulu Mustafa ʿAlî went as far as to declare Şücâʿ as one of the reasons for the
decline of the empire at the end of his life; see KA, fols 497a–498b. Interestingly, Sufi
biographers such as Hacı ʿAlî were also critical of this; see HA-TFM, fol. 553a.
104 Compare the biographies of these figures, and their classification by Hulvî as zâʾika
rather than successors in the order’s silsile in LH, fols 233a–4a and 266b–7b (483–5
and 557–9); in another part of the work, Hulvî chronicled Muhyî’s shocking rejection
as successor to the Gülşeniye shaykh ʿAlî el-Safvetî, see fol. 274b (578–9). This will be
discussed more fully in an article yet to be published, John J. Curry, “The Meeting of the
Two Sultans: Three Sufi Mystics Negotiate with the Court of Murad III,” The Nexus of
Sufism and Society, eds John J. Curry and Erik S. Ohlander, forthcoming.
105 For more on the Kâdızâdelis and their attacks against the Halveti institutions in İstanbul,
see MCZ-PP, pp. 129–72.
106 See, for example, the critique of recent scholarship on the topic in the aforementioned
dissertation of Derin Terzioğlu, “Sufi and Dissident,” pp. 248–50, 260–3, and 451–7.
107 Mustafa Naʿîmâ (d. 1128/1716), Târîh-i Naʿîmâ (İstanbul: Matbaʿa-yı Amîre, 1863), v.
6, p. 218.

PART II
. . .
THE EVOLUTION OF A
.
HALVETI SUB- BRANCH:
THE LIFE AND CAREER
.
OF ŞAʿBÂN- I VELI AND
HIS FOLLOWERS IN THE
KASTAMONU REGION

INTRODUCTION
On the southwest side of the modern town of Kastamonu in the Black Sea
region, behind the hilltop fortifications that once guarded this strategic route
through northern Anatolia, lies the tomb and mosque of the great Halveti saint
S¸aʿbân-ı Veli Efendi (d. 976/1569). It remains an important spiritual and his-
torical landmark in the city of Kastamonu to the present, and is still visited regu-
larly by the local community (see Figure 2). While tracing his spiritual ancestry
back to Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî, like most of the other Halveti shaykhs, S¸aʿbân is
best known for founding the major branch of the Halveti order known as the
S¸aʿbâniye, whose silsile can be seen in Appendix II. While this branch of the
order became a powerful political and social force in Ottoman circles in the
second half of the seventeenth century under the guidance of key figures such as
Karabâs¸ ʿAlî Veli (d. 1096/1685) and Nasûhî Efendi (d. 1130/1718),1 its earlier
history and development have still not received the comprehensive study that
they deserve.2
Our sources on Şaʿbân-ı Veli’s life and history derive almost entirely from
the work of ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî (d. 1044/1636), who is the subject of Part III of
this work. A complex interaction between author and subject informs Fuʾâdî’s
writing about Şaʿbân-ı Veli, so a certain degree of foreshadowing of some of
the circumstances surrounding the composition of the hagiography and a brief
explanation of its character are in order before proceeding to the events that it
describes. The Menâkıb-ı Şaʿbân-ı Veli (or “Virtuous Anecdotes of Şaʿbân-ı
Veli”), in the form that it has come down to us, is not the original text of the
work as ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî first produced it.3 It is instead an abridgment of a longer
work written in Arabic,4 of which no copy has yet come to light. Scholars who
have attempted to find a copy of the original have concluded that it has been
89

Figure 2 The entrance to the Şaʿbân-ı Veli complex
lost.5 Thus, a frustrating aspect of the account is that Fuʾâdî frequently refers his
audience to the longer hagiographical work for further details, and periodically
stresses that the present abridgment covers only a portion of the events surround-
ing the life of Şaʿbân-ı Veli and his successors.
The abridgment, as we have it today, is divided into six sections: an introduc-
tion and five chapters. For understanding the life of Şaʿbân-ı Veli himself, the
third, fourth and fifth chapters are the most important in that they narrate various
anecdotes about Şaʿbân and the context in which he established his sainthood.
However, these chapters, which represent over half of the work’s content, are not
just a cut and dried compilation of anecdotes about the saint’s life. Adopting a
strategy somewhat similar to, but not exactly following that of his contemporary
hagiographer, Muhyi-yi Gülşenî,6 ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî intersperses the material he
has chosen with his own scholarly observations on various aspects of doctrine
evoked by the narratives. He conveniently identifies his own interjections in the
work by labeling each of them as “advisory notes” (lâyiha). As a result, the reader
cannot ignore Fuʾâdî’s hovering presence within the work. In some places, his
commentary explaining or clarifying various points channels, controls, and occa-
sionally even dominates the way in which his audience receives the narratives.

Introduction to Part II 91
This interaction raises awkward methodological problems in interpreting
the picture of Şaʿbân-ı Veli that we receive from the Menâkıb. Which character
should the critical scholarly account present first, the saint or his hagiographer?
After much consideration, I came to the conclusion that it is more helpful for
the modern audience to understand the narratives that the hagiographer and his
informants give us about Şaʿbân-ı Veli’s life and career over the course of the
tenth/sixteenth century. This is not to say that the circumstances surrounding the
composition of ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî’s hagiography in the first third of the eleventh/
seventeenth century will remain absent; on the contrary, they must be referenced
in order to interpret the degree to which historians can know “what really hap-
pened” during Şaʿbânʾs life and career. In sum, this study takes the position that
a careful parsing of the narratives about Şaʿbân-ı Veli can allow researchers to
tease out expressions of both the historical context of that era and the challenges
faced by mid-tenth/sixteenth century Halveti shaykhs in building a following.
In the process, we can learn a great deal about the process of establishing sub-
branches of the Halveti order and the evolution of Sufi mystics’ leadership roles
in the provincial areas of the Ottoman Empire.
To better clarify both the historical figure of Şaʿbân-ı Veli and the mean-
ings that the stories of his life took on among later generations, the following
chapters seek to lay out a interpretative account of his life and legacy. Chapter 3
offers a brief summary of the limited evidence we have for the earliest period of
Şaʿbân’s life, along with the pre-existing religious and social context that paved
the way for his appearance in Kastamonu. Chapter 4 examines the development
of Şaʿbân-ı Veli and his following in Kastamonu from his arrival during the
1520s to his death in 1569. Chapter 5 concludes with discussion of Şaʿbân’s
successors, and the challenges faced by his nascent sub-branch’s followers in the
decades after his passing.
Notes
1 The lives, works and successors of both men are given in NYIL, pp. 102–23. Nasûhî Efendi
and his works have been the subject of a recent monograph; see Kemal Edib Kürkçüoğlu,
Shaykh Muhammed Nasûhî: Hayatı, Eserleri, Divanı, Mektupları (İstanbul: Alem Ticaret
Yayıncılık, 1996); this period will be discussed more fully in Part IV of this study.
2 The first modern historical study of this branch of the Halveti order was written by
Muhammed İhsan Oğuz at the close of the First World War in 1918, with the study on
the later eighteenth-century figure of Mustafa Çerkeşî appended much later in 1961; see
MİO, pp. 11–12. The study is still worth consulting, as Oğuz seemed to have insights
from his time that are otherwise lost today. The order first came under scrutiny in Western
scholarship in the early 1950s by the great German Orientalist scholar Hans Joachim
Kissling, whose “Šaʿbân Velî und die Šaʿbânijje,” Dissertationes Orientales et Balcanicae

Collectae (Munich: Beiträge zur Kenntnis Südosteuropas und des Nahen Orients, 1986),
pp. 99–122, contains useful insights on the connection of the sources about the Şaʿbâniye
with the context of anti-Sufi movements of the period, but focuses primarily on the events
described in the later work attached to the Menâkibnâme ten years after its composition
under the title Türbenâme. I thank Prof. Machiel Kiel for informing me of the existence of
this article, and then sending me a copy. Subsequently, a pair of Kastamonu-based Turkish
scholars contributed more substantial studies of the order and its hagiographical and epi-
graphical remnants in the tomb complex. The 1991 study of Abdülkerim Abdulkadiroğlu
provides a thorough overview of the Şaʿbâniye branch of the Halveti order, the career
of Şaʿbân and his successors, poetry produced by the order, and the structures of the
Şaʿbân-ı Veli complex, but it is thoroughly descriptive in most cases and makes little
attempt at a deeper historical analysis of these materials; see AKAK. The short tract of
Ziya Demircioğlu, which is based on a longer work examining all of Kastamonu’s known
saints published in 1962, is a much briefer overview, but contains a very good drawing of
the complex and its inscriptions; see ZD. While these Turkish-language works are based
on the hagiographical source materials, they generally do not move beyond the descriptive
accounts of the anecdotes contained in the sources to further assess the historiography of
the order.
3 Numerous manuscript copies of this work have survived from previous centuries, but few
of them differ significantly from the printed text of the manuscript that first appeared in the
nineteenth century, which is entitled Menâkıb-ı Şerîf-i Pîr-i Halvetî Hazret-i Şaʿbân-ı Veli
ve Türbenâme and published in Kastamonu in 1294/1877; see MSV. A copy of this work
also exists in a published modern Turkish translation that I purchased on-site at the tomb
complex in Kastamonu, which succeeds in conveying an abridged form of the original,
but without retaining the expression of certain key details that enhance our understand-
ing of the text; see Muhammed Safi (ed.), Menakıb-ı Şeyh Şaʿbân-ı Veli ve Türbename
(Kastamonu: Şaʿbân-ı Veli Kültür Vakfı, 1998).
4 Fuʾâdî describes the events that led to his decision to prepare an abridgment for broader
circulation among the general public of his day in MSV, pp. 5–6. We know that the original
was written in Arabic based on a reference to a chapter heading in the longer hagiography,
which Fuʾâdî cited in its original Arabic; see MSV, p. 68.
5 AKAK, p. 64.
6 For a brief study on the narrative strategy of Muhyi-yi Gülşenî, see JC-HWS.

Chapter
Echoes of a Distant Past: Şaʿbân- ı

.
Veli’s early life and conversion to
Sufism
While some Muslim saints were born into prominent family lineages and
attracted historical attention from their earliest years, Şaʿbân-ı Veli was not
among this group and only rose to prominence in a later era. Therefore, the
picture we receive of his early life and his eventual incorporation into the fol-
lowing of the Halveti order is among the most ill-documented parts of his life.
Nevertheless, these events are not without value for the historian if they are
placed within the political, religious, and social context of early tenth/sixteenth-
century Asia Minor under a recently ascendant Ottoman state.
Antecedents of Islamic and Sufi Culture in Kastamonu

Before the Arrival of Şaʿbân-ı Veli̇
By the time Şaʿbân-ı Veli made his home in Kastamonu in the first half of the
tenth/sixteenth century, the city had already been integrated into the Islamic
world for several centuries. After the invasions of the Seljuks, various Turcoman
tribes, and Latin Crusaders following the defeat of the Byzantines by the Seljuk
ruler Alp Arslan at Manzikert in 463/1071, a Turcoman dynasty known as the
Danishmendids established themselves in north-central Anatolia. They appear
to have first taken control of Kastamonu in 498/1105. Although the city passed
briefly back into Byzantine hands periodically over the subsequent three decades
in conjunction with campaigns of various Byzantine rulers and generals into the
Anatolian plateau, a nominally Muslim sovereign ruled over the city until the
Ottoman absorption of the province following the conquest of Constantinople
in 857/1453. After the weakening and dissolution of the Danishmendid polity
toward the end of the sixth/twelfth century, the city and settlements in its
93

environs, while theoretically a part of the imperial polities of their day (e.g.
Seljuk, Ilkhanid, and briefly, Ottoman), often operated in a quasi-autonomous
manner under local Turcoman rulers. With the growing weakness and even-
tual break up of the Ilkhanids in the fourteenth century, Kastamonu became an
increasingly autonomous political unit, or beylik, that would maintain a certain
degree of independence until almost a decade into the reign of Mehmed the
Conqueror, when it was finally incorporated into the Ottoman state.1 Even in
modern times, the city of Kastamonu and its environs are still home to some of
the oldest Turco-Islamic architecture in the region, with mosques and tombs from
the pre-Ottoman period prominently displayed in many parts of the city.2 Going
hand-in-hand with this growth of Islamic monumental heritage was a prolifera-
tion of saints’ tombs and holy places, some of which were built by the ruling
families of the Çobanoğulları (r. c. 660/1262–691/1292) and Candaroğulları
(also known as the İsfendiyaroğulları, r. 691/1292–863/1459) from the seventh/
thirteenth through ninth/fifteenth centuries. Many of these structures are still
maintained today, and proudly shown to visitors as a part of the local culture and
lore.3 These holy places, and the Muslim populations that attached themselves to
them, probably played an important role in the gradual conversion of the former
Byzantine subjects to Islam over the course of subsequent centuries.
Thus, by the time of Ottoman ascendancy in the region, a process of
Islamicization, albeit still incomplete, had long been underway. Incoming
Halveti devotees would undoubtedly have found fertile ground for their activi-
ties by the ninth/fifteenth century, and Şaʿbân-ı Veli was not the first prominent
Halveti shaykh to enter the region. Interestingly enough, ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî made
an editorial decision to devote the third chapter of his hagiography to an earlier
Kastamonu-based Halveti saint, Seyyid Sünnetî Efendi (d. 863/1459), who
pre-dated Şaʿbân and the founding of his sub-branch of the order by several
generations. Sünnetî Efendi’s tomb still exists, and is marked by a refurbished
tombstone on the site of the Şaʿbân-ı Veli complex today, lying just outside the
prayer niche within the present mosque (see Figure 3).
We learn very little about Sünnetî’s early life, except that he was esteemed as
having been a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, and was born and raised
in the area of Kastamonu.4 Beyond this, we are told only that he proved to be
remarkably adept on the mystical path and had natural poetic abilities. Thus, the
shaykhs of Kastamonu eventually concluded that they lacked the means to guide
him effectively, and insisted that he travel east to complete his mystical training
with Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî.
When he arrived outside Yahyâ’s Sufi lodge in Baku, Yahyâ sensed his
presence and told his followers that a descendant of the Prophet wishing to join
the order had just arrived and they should bring him inside. Yahyâ’s dervishes

Echoes of a Distant Past 95
Figure 3 The tomb of Seyyid Ahmed Sünnetî Efendi
dutifully trooped outside to find Sünnetî waiting for an audience, but were sur-
prised to find their guest was not wearing the green turban characteristic to those
from the Prophet’s lineage. After Sünnetî had entered and sat down, Yahyâ was
equally confused, as ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî relates:
When [Sünnetî] had kissed his hand, he said, “welcome, dervish, but why didn’t
you bring your green [turban]?” The dervish responded, “my lord, I came to your
threshold to serve with sincerity. I am not capable of anything other than service.
But [with the excuse] that ‘he is among the descendants of the Prophet,’ I would
not be given that latrine cleaning service that is necessary in the rules of conduct,
and by not completing my service, which is required at your threshold, I would
also not find perfection in the knowledge of God that I obtained. I came [dressed
this way] out of fear that I would remain deficient.” Sultan [Yahyâ] commanded,
“dervish, you completed the service with this sincere intent; we know the service
that is suitable and necessary for you. Come, bring your green [turban].”5
Such anecdotes betray hidden tensions behind their emphasis on the spiritual
pedigree and judicious mystical insight of their subjects. They reflect echoes

of issues that troubled an earlier, mid-ninth/fifteenth century generation of the
Halveti order. The crux of the matter was that there was a question over whether
or not the class of sayyids (descendants of the Prophet Muhammad) and Sufis
could mix without compromising the cultural expectations that governed their
respective places in society. Muslim leaders, even if they were respected and
powerful Sufi masters like Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî, still found it unseemly to make
members of the sayyid class engage in the type of demeaning work that the
Halveti order considered necessary in order to humiliate and tame the passions
of the carnal soul. Yahyâ deflected this tension by recognizing his disciple’s
attempt to temporarily renounce his “sayyid-hood” as proof that he has already
surpassed this stage of the order’s training. It would also have succeeded in
preserving the reputation of a figure who had a built-in claim to sanctity. As a
future purveyor of the order’s doctrine, this was a quality which would not have
escaped Yahyâ’s notice, given his strategy of seeking followers to spread the
order’s teaching far and wide. ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî confirms the wisdom of Yahyâ’s
decisions by noting that Sünnetî was sent back to Kastamonu as one of his many
successors. He settled in the northern part of the city in an area behind the hill
where Kastamonu’s fortress stood, built a small mosque, and guided his follow-
ing there until his death.
Yet leaving aside this mention of earlier Halveti concerns over political
and religious doctrines, ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî had another important purpose in
including these anecdotes about this Halveti predecessor from an earlier, pre-
Ottoman period of Kastamonu’s history. Perhaps following the lead of his
informants, he felt compelled to link the founder of his own sub-branch of
the order, Şaʿbân-ı Veli, with this illustrious Halveti predecessor. Even during
the early eleventh/seventeenth-century period in which Fuʾâdî wrote his hagi-
ography, local spiritual descendants and followers of this earlier figure might
have still been around to offer resistance to an upstart group that had estab-
lished itself in comparatively recent times. The Menâkıb notes that Sünnetî’s
son, Seyyid Muzaffereddîn Efendi, was a müfti and teacher in the prominent
Atâbey Gazi medrese and mosque complex in Kastamonu, and was buried
close to his father.6 While the Menâkıb does not elaborate further, this suggests
that the legacy of Seyyid Sünnetî and his descendants was perhaps not all that
distant when Şaʿbân-ı Veli first came to Kastamonu, and their influence may
have persisted even into Fuʾâdî’s own lifetime. Thus, these narratives seek to
allay concerns about the potential for conflict or disconnect between the two
traditions:
On account of [Sünnetî’s] capacity for divination being powerful, and his

knowing the Preserved Tablet (levhe ʿâlim), knowledge came to him that his

silsile would be cut off, and that his prayer rug would go empty for a time.
When he beseeched God with a measure of heartfelt remembrance, it is related
. . . that he used to meet with the Prophet Hızır, peace be upon him, on many
troubling matters and important issues, and he used to benefit from him. This
time, at the end of his supplication, the Prophet Hızır . . . was ready, and pre-
dicted: “O Seyyid Ahmed Sünnetî, do not be concerned at all! In fact, by the
command of God your silsile will be cut off, and your prayer rug will go vacant
for a time. But after some time a lord of the Pole of the Age will come from the
silsile of Seyyid Yahyâ Sultan, and he will once again revive your prayer rug.
The teaching and guidance on your prayer rug will again be established in a
permanent and uniform way with his divinely granted power, and the divinely
granted states and God-given benefits of his successors, and the successors of
the successors who will give guidance after him on his prayer rug. They are
also yours, and you will not be forgotten; you will be remembered until the Day
of Judgment, and you will be remembered with a prayer of blessing.” After he
gave this good news, [Sünnetî] became calm, and when he went to the other
world, he was buried in the area of the prayer-niche of the aforementioned
mosque.7
Meetings between saints and Hızır were not an unusual occurrence in the litera-
ture of Ottoman mysticism.8 In this case, the meeting served to link the earlier
figure of Seyyid Sünnetî with the career of Şaʿbân-ı Veli a century later. By
including this narrative, Fuʾâdî conferred legitimacy on the career of his pro-
tagonist among Kastamonu’s population, and invited the followers of Sünnetî
Efendi to join a revived mission by linking the two orders into a divinely
ordained and unified whole. This strategy succeeded in placating local devotees
of an older tradition, who might otherwise have felt marginalized within the
new one. It also contributed to enlarging the following of the order under the
direction of Şaʿbân and his successors by localizing Şaʿbân himself, who was
an outsider at first (as we shall see, Şaʿbân-ı Veli’s shaykh was based in another
part of Anatolia).
Fuʾâdî’s work clinches the sacred character of the relationship between the
two saints by concluding with an anecdote from his father-in-law, Hüsâmeddin
Halife, who related that a flood that had occurred during Fuʾâdî’s teenage years.
It destroyed the walls surrounding the mosque and the tombs, so both Sünnetî’s
and Şaʿbân-ı Veli’s tombs had to be opened for repairs. In the course of the
exhumation, they found that Sünnetî’s body had miraculously failed to decay,
a standard hagiographic recognition of divine favor. But they also found that
Şaʿbân-ı Veli’s feet had assumed a position that clearly indicated the respect and
honor in which he held his predecessor.9

Early Life of Şaʿbân Efendi, and his Induction into the

.
Halveti Order
Having addressed this potential sticking point, Fuʾâdî then went on to devote
the majority of his work to the life and career of Şaʿbân-ı Veli, starting with his
birth and childhood. In contrast to some of his predecessors and contemporaries
in the Halveti order, Şaʿbân’s early life is not particularly well documented, nor
is it corroborated by additional sources. We depend solely on Fuʾâdî, who tells
us that Şaʿbân was born in a small village close to the town of Taşköprü to the
east of Kastamonu near the end of the ninth/fifteenth century. Supposedly, his
mother and father died when he was very young, leaving him to be brought up
by a generous woman who saw to his early education, which included lessons
with local scholars in Kastamonu and Taşköprü.10 She even had the means to
help him go to İstanbul to continue his studies, but died shortly after he arrived
there.
Interpreting the historicity of this part of Şaʿbân’s life story is probably
impossible, as it reflects constructed narratives that allow the hagiographer
to demonstrate parallels between the saint’s life and the life of the Prophet
Muhammad. Şaʿbân’s benefactor perhaps combines elements of the role
played by the both Prophet’s wet-nurse, Halîmah, with the support he enjoyed
from his first wife, Khadîja.11 Still, we cannot rule out that it could reflect the
important role that generous female benefactors might play in provincial urban
centers like Kastamonu in supporting children who became orphans before
the age of maturity. Moreover, a female audience for the narrative could
take a didactic and pious example from the story that would see numerous
opportunities for realization in the Hobbesian historical context of pre-modern
societies.
Closely paralleling standard accounts, after his arrival in İstanbul and some
acquisition of the exoteric aspects of the Islamic sciences, Şaʿbân felt dissatisfied
with his training and became attracted to the mystical aspects of Islam instead.
He began to search among the Sufi masters of İstanbul for a mystical guide. But
most of the Sufi masters whom he sought out in İstanbul were unable to help him;
rather he is presented as spending a good deal of his time alone and withdrawn
from the company of others.12 While Fuʾâdî presents this as praiseworthy, even
inserting some of his own poetry praising the importance of solitude in pursuing
the mystical path, the anecdote could also reflect the difficulties an aspiring pro-
vincial scholar like Şaʿbân may have faced in being taken seriously as a student
in the imperial capital.13
In fact, there is some confusion in İstanbul-based biographical sources about
who Şaʿbân’s shaykh actually was. The generally accepted figure for Şaʿbân’s

successors was a Bolu-based shaykh by the name of Hayreddîn Tokâdî (d.
932/1525), one of the successors to Cemâl el-Halvetî. However, Nevʿîzâde
ʿAtâʾî (d. 1045/1635), author of a biographical dictionary of Ottoman Muslim
scholars and saints, provides contradictory information about Şaʿbân’s place in
the Halveti chain of transmission. At one point, he concurs with the standard
account and names Hayreddîn Tokâdî as Şaʿbân-ı Veli’s shaykh, but in another
part of the work devoted to the biography of Şaʿbân himself, he claims that
Şaʿbân’s shaykh was, in fact, a man by the name of Konrapalı Muslihuddîn
Efendi. In Fuʾâdî’s Menâkıb, on the other hand, this individual was a contempo-
rary follower of Hayreddîn Tokâdî alongside Şaʿbân.14 So can we reconcile these
conflicting pieces of evidence?
A close reading of Fuʾâdî’s hagiography suggests that we can. Fuʾâdî attests
that Şaʿbân received an inspiration by means of a dream to return to his home
region after failing to attain his goals in İstanbul. While he was on the road back
to Kastamonu, the caravan in which he was traveling stopped on the road some
miles west of the town of Bolu. Awaiting their departure on the next stage of the
journey, Şaʿbân’s companions decided to go and visit a nearby Sufi hospice. As
Fuʾâdî recounts it, Şaʿbân was skeptical about this plan:
In fact, when his companions said, “come, let’s go and listen to the tevhîd-
chanting15 of the Sufis,” Şaʿbân Efendi’s wishes also leaned strongly toward
coming to Sultan [Hayreddîn] right away with the urge of attraction and divine
love which was in his heart, and spending the whole night. But being a rational
and judicious man in his basic character, he didn’t show an open attraction.
He made a polite indication and showed a cautious countenance before going,
saying, “you shall come to the Sufis and their tevhîd-chanting. But their states
of ecstasy are dominant; as soon as the ecstasy imposes itself on those who are
excessive in divine zeal and [who have] the light of faith in their hearts, they
become a group of chain-makers.16 They pull [others] into their own path and
silsile [chains of authority]. Don’t be careless, or it will be a difficult situation.”
But his traveling companions were attracted to the zikr; they went, saying, “get
up, let’s go, what are they capable of?” They entered into the zikr circle, and
afterward Şaʿbân Efendi sent them back to their lodging places, saying, “didn’t
I say to you that they were a group of chain-makers? A state has come over
me [such] that I have no remedy but to stay. I’ll come in the morning,” and he
himself remained there.17
Ironically, given his initial reaction to the whole affair, Şaʿbân never rejoined
his traveling companions to continue their journey. He spent the remainder of
the night explaining his troubles to Hayreddîn Tokâdî, reciting the Halveti litany

of the Vird-i Settâr and, once morning came, praying the dawn prayer. He then
renounced all his worldly property, accepted the garments symbolic of initiation
into the Halveti order, and began his life anew on the mystical path. He would
remain for a number of years receiving mystical training from his shaykh before
finally setting out on his own.18
The anecdote represents a decisive turning point in Şaʿbân’s life (along with
that of any potential Sufi adept in the audience who would hear this narrative).
Yet it also gives us some clues about how the Halveti order was perceived
among the religious classes of that time. Şaʿbân’s initial resistance probably
stemmed from some level of conviction among the exoterically minded reli-
gious scholars with whom he had studied in İstanbul that Sufi gatherings suf-
fered from a questionable legitimacy. Given the tensions surrounding the Sufi
origins of the Safavids during the first quarter of the tenth/sixteenth century, this
would have been especially elevated during the time period when this narrative
occurred. Nevertheless, Sufi ceremonies and gatherings were magnets for social
activity in the community, especially for travelers who lacked other connec-
tions in any given local milieu. Şaʿbân himself would have been an example of
someone who lacked strong family or political connections in society based on
the circumstances of his childhood, and Halveti shaykhs like Tokâdî undoubt-
edly recognized this. They could draw on these struggling groups of people to
expand their followings and ensure the survival of their branches of the order.
A person like Şaʿbân, who had received some degree of religious education
above that of the typical individual, would have been especially attractive as a
recruit.
However, multiple dynamics are at work in the story, and we should not
overlook Fuʾâdî’s didactic intent. The narrative of Şaʿbân’s initial resistance to
the order acted as an illustration of how potential aspirants to the Halveti order
should not enter into it based solely on their enjoyment of the social experiences
it entailed. While Şaʿbân’s more enthusiastic companions enjoyed only the
social aspects of the zikr ceremony and did not join the order, Şaʿbân engaged in
a good deal of critical reflection on the matter. Only afterward did he undertake
the actions that involved pledging himself to the order.
One final aspect of the first meeting between Şaʿbân and his shaykh
Hayreddîn can be easily overlooked without reference to geography, however.
An uninformed reader examining the text for the first time might be forgiven for
thinking that these events took place on the outskirts of Bolu; in fact, they most
likely did not. At the time, the lodge and tomb of Hayreddîn Tokâdî lay a solid
day’s journey west of the town of Bolu, and most likely took the form of a de
facto outpost, akin to a menzilhâne, that could also double as a travelers’ hospice
and facilitate travel along the main east–west trunk road.19 The Tokâdî complex

was strategically located at the top of a mountain pass by which all traffic coming
from İstanbul and other cities in the region of the Sea of Marmara would have
to pass on their way into the interior of Anatolia (and still does today). Passing
travelers and caravans undoubtedly took advantage of this outpost as a way-
station during their travels back and forth in the region. Given the subsequent
career of Şaʿbân-ı Veli, we can assume the success that Tokâdî’s institution had
in spreading the Halveti order throughout the region.
Given the critical role that Hayreddîn Tokâdî played in Şaʿbân’s life, one
would think that the hagiography would have much more to say about him.
Nevertheless, citing length concerns, Fuʾâdî declines to give details of further
interaction. At the very least, the name Tokâdî informs us of the shaykh’s origins
in the north-central Anatolian town of Tokat, and his recently restored tombstone
informs us that he died in 932/1525 (see Figure 4).20 However, we have no infor-
mation on his relationship with his ostensible teacher, Cemâl el-Halvetî, nor on
how he came to settle in this remote mountain pass. Fuʾâdi’s only other narrative
that offers us any insight on Tokâdî’s activities focuses on an anecdote related
on the authority of Tokâdî’s son Mehmed Çelebi Efendi, who took his father’s
place as shaykh after moving to Amasya and building his own following there.21
Rooted in a contemporary observer of the careers of both Şaʿbân and his shaykh,
this anecdote reveals interesting aspects of Halveti practice in training aspirants
on the path in the early tenth/sixteenth century. It also clarifies reasons why the
later seventeenth-century Ottoman biographer ʿAtâʾî was confused about who
Şaʿbân’s shaykh was:
When they sent Konapavî22 Muslihuddîn Efendi, who was a famous scholar
and a contemporary of Şaʿbân Efendi in Bolu, to his homeland of Konapa, the
esteemed [Muslihuddîn] was a knowledgeable one, sound of intellect, and gentle
in nature like Hazret-i ʿOsmân. Şaʿbân Efendi also, by having a cheerful dispo-
sition and a persevering character like Hazret-i ʿAlî,23 went to support and help
him by the will of God. While traveling, Muslihuddîn Efendi halted alongside
the road and thought for a while. Then he turned and wanted to go back to Bolu
again. As soon as Şaʿbân Efendi asked, “why are you turning and going back to
Bolu?” he replied, “a sensation came over me [such] that I didn’t find the strength
to guide others and the capacity to be a deputy in myself, [so] I’ll go back to my
esteemed [shaykh], and I’ll serve the order some more, and I’ll go be a deputy
after that.” Şaʿbân Efendi said, “O brother, this feeling is necessary for you on
account of leaving behind pride and vanity and the annihilation of existence. This
means that nothing remains of base characteristics in you, and you are perfected
in the righteousness of the self, the purification of the heart, and the cleansing
of the soul. But it is clearly a mistake to consider this, because it is necessary to

Figure 4 The tomb of Hayreddîn Tokâdî

think badly about a perfected guide, saying ‘he sent me without perfecting my
state and unprepared to be a deputy.’ Here’s what is proper right now: you should
obey the order, and go to the place where you were sent, with the assistance of the
spiritual power of the esteemed [shaykh].”24

Şaʿbân’s timely intervention succeeded in fortifying his companion and
allowed him to continue the mission to which he was assigned, but this is not the
most interesting element that the anecdote reveals. Instead, it suggests that in earlier
periods, the newly minted Halveti shaykhs of rural Anatolia may have worked in
groups of two, with a lower ranking member of the order acting as an assistant to
a successor in order to gain experience before receiving his own assignment. Was
this normal, or was Fuʾâdî choosing to wield this anecdote as a demonstration of
how Şaʿbân had achieved a superior spiritual presence over that of his contempo-
raries even at a comparatively early stage of his training, and thereby establish a
common hagiographical trope to the benefit of the hagiography’s protagonist?
While this question would require further corroboration, that of reconciling
our biographical sources does not. We now see that since the İstanbul-based
biographer and Fuʾâdî contemporary, Nevʿîzâde ʿAtâʾî, was probably not
directly acquainted with the narrative given in Fuʾâdî’s work. He must have
received a garbled second-hand report on the activities of prominent Şaʿbâniye
leaders at the time he was compiling his own work. This would explain his erro-
neous suggestion that Konrapalı Muslihuddîn was Şaʿbân’s shaykh. Corollary
to this is that he probably never obtained or heard anything substantial about
Fuʾâdî’s hagiography, because the story so clearly implies that if anyone was
acting as a shaykh in this relationship, it was Şaʿbân Efendi:
[W]hen they came to Konapa, no disciple or follower appeared for some time,
but Şaʿbân Efendi couldn’t slight the esteemed [shaykh Tokâdî] and depart. One
day he said to Muslihuddîn Efendi: “Go up to the pulpit on Friday and draw the
people to the house of the order with the strong cord of the manifest sacred law
from an aspect of exoteric guidance. One hopes that by attraction from an aspect
of the esoteric state, the people will become your disciples and followers for this
reason.” On account of the esteemed [shaykh]’ s being a knowledgeable and judi-
cious figure, when he encouraged and invited [people] to the şeriʿat and tarikat
with spiritual preaching and devout admonition, everyone slipped into rapture
and emotion according to his own level and condition. That day, all of those
who were present became followers, and several of the people took the oath of
allegiance and became dervishes.25
Behind the vague wording, what the narrative implies is that Şaʿbân Efendi
recognized that the best strategy for establishing themselves in this milieu was
not to flaunt their esoteric credentials as Halveti Sufis, but to adapt themselves
to the more basic levels of religiosity found among the local population, and
draw them into the order gradually from this starting point. While the wording
does not make it explicit, this may have included appealing to local customs and

superstitions.26 It was a lesson that many of the comparatively well-educated
literati of the Halveti path struggled to learn in the early stages of their careers as
shaykhs, especially if they were sent to regions that did not resemble the urban
centers of the Ottoman world where many of them originated. Indeed, this may
have been part of the test that their guides set for them as they neared the end
of their training.27 Şaʿbân may have been especially valuable in this particular
enterprise due to his roots in one of the smaller Anatolian rural communities,
which may have been why Shaykh Hayreddîn sent him along as an assistant for
this venture with Muslihuddîn Efendi.
***
Our sources have little else to tell us about Şaʿbân-ı Veli’s early life and career
beyond these carefully selected anecdotes. This is a frustrating gap, largely
because it glosses over a potentially interesting provincial offshoot of Cemâl
el-Halvetî’s legacy during a tense time in Ottoman history. In fact, we cannot
rule out the possibility that Ömer el-Fuʾâdî did not want to discuss this part of
the history too much, as Şaʿbân’s predecessors did not represent a strong link to
the founders of the Halveti order in the Ottoman context. This may have led to a
strong desire on his part to direct the focus of his audience to the life and career
of the local founder of his own sub-branch of the order, a story about which he
was much better informed. Since the environment and geography of Kastamonu
itself acted as a protagonist for most of his narratives, Fuʾâdî’s frame of refer-
ence shifts back to that region permanently. His audience, be they his own con-
temporaries or ourselves, have no choice but to follow his lead, and to that part
of the story we must now turn.
Notes
1 For more on the dynastic and political history of central Anatolia during the Seljuk and
beylicate periods, into which Kastamonu and the Turcoman groups based in its environs
periodically intrude, see Claude Cahen, Pre-Ottoman Turkey: A General Survey of the
Material and Spiritual Culture and History c. 1071–1330, trans. J. Jones-Williams (New
York: Taplinger, 1968), esp. pp. 310–13. The same author also tackled the issue of
Kastamonu’s ambiguous position among the more prominent states of its era in a separate
article; “Questions d’histoire de la province de Kastamonu au XIIIe siècle,” Selçuklu
Araştırmaları Dergisi 3 (1971), 145–58.
2 Indeed, Kastamonu province is home to a number of painted wooden mosques from early
periods that are unique contributions to the history of Islamic architecture and art; see, for
example, Zühtü Yaman, Kastamonu Kasaba Köyüʾnde Candaroğlu Mahmut Bey Camii
(Ankara: Kano Ltd Şti., 2000).

3 While visiting Kastamonu, I and my wife were taken to the tomb of Aşıklı Sultan, one of
the oldest surviving structures in town. The lower half of the two-storey tomb structure
holds the mummified remains of five bodies, including that of Aşıklı Sultan, a Seljuk
commander who was reported to have fallen as a martyr fighting the Byzantines in the
early sixth/twelfth century. Local people tell a story about a governor from the period of
the early Turkish Republic who, after seeing a fire atop the tomb in a dream, awoke and
looked out to see that the area of the tomb was on fire. After extinguishing the fire, they
found that the feet of one of the mummies in the tomb were miraculously undamaged by
the blaze. For a brief study of the remains of the Aşıklı Sultan complex, see KKE, pp.
60–1.
4 MSV, pp. 34–5.
5 MSV, pp. 34–5.
6 MSV, p. 35. For more on the now renovated Atâbey Gazi mosque and its medrese, which
survived into the 1960s but has now been destroyed, along with other constructions attrib-
uted to the Çobanoğlu leader Muzaffereddin Yavlak Arslan (d. 691/1291), see KKE, pp.
58–9 and 67.
7 MSV, pp. 35–6.
8 See, for example, the discussion that the Halveti shaykh Ümmî Sinân (d. 975/1568) had
with Hızır and his counterpart İlyâs, as witnessed in CAMA, fols 13a–14b.
9 MSV, p. 36.
10 Abdülkerim Abdulkadiroğlu mentions an anecdote, probably from Hüseyin Vassaf’s
Sefine-i Evliyâ, that Şaʿbân took lessons from one Hoca Veli b. ʿOsmân (d. 917/1512),
who is buried in the Abdürrezzak Camii Türbesi in Kastamonu. However, Vassaf’s
sources may reflect oral traditions and additions formulated at a much later date, as Fuʾâdî
does not mention it himself; see AKAK, p. 38.
11 MSV, p. 37; see also the remarks of AKAK, pp. 37–8, who correctly notes that Fuʾâdî
presented Şaʿbân as an orphan, raised on the kindness of a milk-mother, thereby making
his situation identical to that of the Prophet Muhammad.
12 Şaʿban’s dissatisfaction with exoteric knowledge, or ʿilm-i zâhir, and his search for
a proper mystical guide fall squarely into a hagiographical trope that guides the lives
of most Halveti shaykhs, if not all Sufi shaykhs. See, for example, the mind numbing
regularity of this pattern for the early Halveti figures up through Cemâl el-Halvetî and
his Sünbüliye order successors in the seventeenth-century biographical encyclopedia of
HA-TFM, fols 517b–50a.
13 MSV, p. 38.
14 The two references can be found in NVA, pp. 62 and 199. For a laudable attempt to
resolve the confusion in the sources that also includes information found in Vassaf’s
Sefine-i Evliyâ, see RÖ-OT, pp. 80–1.
15 A repeated chant invoking the monotheistic formula, usually in the form of “Lâ ilaha illâ
Allah,” or “There is no god but God.”
16 The expression Şaʿbân used here is zincirci tâʾifesi, which I interpreted as having a nega-
tive meaning, implying a group that seeks to bind someone irrevocably to them, some-
what like a modern-day cult. It may also reference the silsile idea as well.
17 MSV, p. 39.
18 Abdulkadiroğlu, perhaps relying on Vassaf’s Sefine-i Evliyâ, suggests that Şaʿbân first
pledged his allegiance to Tokâdî in 925/1519, and did not depart with the successorship to
Kastamonu until sometime in 936/1530 or 937/1531. However, this does not correspond

with Tokâdî’s date of death, which is generally accepted as having occurred in 932/1525.
Still, if we accept Fuʾâdî’s assertion that Şaʿbân spent twelve years in the company of his
shaykh (MSV, p. 42), then Şaʿbân would have been little more than a teenager when he
first met Tokâdî. While this is not outside the realm of possibility, our information about
this period in Şaʿbân’s life is at best marked by a good deal of chronological uncertainty;
see AKAK, p. 40.
19 For more on the historical evolution of the Ottoman menzil system, see Yusuf Halaçoğlu,
“Menzil,” DİA, vol. 29, pp. 159–60. During the course of my research in Turkey, I
discovered that I had also made this mistake at the time when I visited Bolu to seek out
on-site evidence of Hayreddîn Tokâdî’s tomb and lodge. Since Bolu is not a large town,
I assumed a taxi ride to these places would not require a substantial investment. Instead,
the taxi driver was ecstatic to learn that he was going to earn a weighty fare by driving my
wife and me some 20 km out of town and back – a fact which we did not ascertain until
the damage had already been done.
20 In the past decade, the tomb and lodge complex of Hayreddîn Tokâdî has re-emerged
as a local pilgrimage site and park. Little remains of the original foundations except
Hayreddîn Tokâdî’s tomb and a small room with a tree growing out of its middle that
may indicate the original central room of the lodge, and now surrounded by a brand new
mosque complex.
21 MSV, p. 40. The existence of Mehmed Çelebi is corroborated by other sources; see
Abdîzade Hüseyin Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, eds Ali Yılmaz and Mehmet Akkuş
(Ankara: Amasya Belediyesi Kültür Yayınları, 1986), vol. 1, p. 197.
22 In modern parlance, Konrapalı would be substituted for this more Persianized form of the
word.
23 The narrator of this anecdote is comparing the two subjects of the story with ʿUthmân b.
ʿAffân (d. 35/656) and ʿAlî b. Abu Tâlib (d. 40/661), the third and fourth of the Rightly-
Guided Caliphs of early Islamic history. When narrating the initiation of Şaʿbân into the
Halveti order under his own shaykh, Fuʾâdî had earlier had compared his submission with
that of the first Rightly-Guided Caliph, Abu Bakr (d. 12/634) to the Prophet Muhammad.
Some of Fuʾâdî’s other writings and teachings specifically focus on the example of the
first four caliphs as important models for the followers of the order, as will be discussed
in Part III.
24 MSV, pp. 40–1.
25 MSV, pp. 41–2.
26 The Sünbüliye Halvetî shaykh Merkez Efendi (d. 959/1552) also traveled in the rural
areas around Bursa attempting to guide the local people there in the earlier part of his
career. One of the anecdotes preserved about him suggests that he was not always suc-
cessful. One day, he was preaching in the local mosque with his eyes closed in rever-
ence, but because it was close to harvest time, the local farmers did not feel inclined
to stay and listen to him. Since they were more attached to the Bursa-based saint, Emîr
Sultân, they had little interest in what he had to say. Despite the fact that the mosque
had rapidly emptied out, Merkez Efendi continued to preach, much to the exasperation
of the mosque’s guardian, who sarcastically remarked that he would just give Merkez
Efendi the key and have him lock up when he was done. In response, Merkez Efendi
informed him that while the people may have departed, the spirits invisible to the sight
of the uninitiated had not, and it was to them that he was directing his admonitions.
This narrative also suggests the tactics to which newcomers to a given region may have

had to resort in order to compete for the attention of the local population; see THV, fols
27b–8a.
27 In his younger years, the famed Halvetî mystic, Niyâzî-i Misrî (d. 1105/1694), would
leave a rural community in the area of modern-day Denizli to which his shaykh had
assigned him in disgust, because the people there were more inclined to boast about his
having come to their community than in actually listening to what he had to say; see DTZ,
pp. 82–4.

Chapter
4
.
Genesis of a Sub- branch: Şaʿbân- ı Veli ’s
Struggles in Kastamonu
We cannot determine the exact date that Şaʿbân-ı Veli arrived in Kastamonu
as a designated successor of Hayreddîn Tokâdî. His hagiography is silent
about the specific circumstances that led to his departure from the region of
Bolu; we do not even know if Tokâdî sent him or if he migrated there after his
shaykh’s death. The hagiography states only that he remained in service to the
Bolu-based branch of the order for twelve years. However, we do know that
he spent the majority of his life, probably exceeding four decades, as a resi-
dent of Kastamonu after leaving Bolu. When compared with our knowledge
about Şaʿbân’s early life, we receive far more information about his activities
in Kastamonu, and the personality of this saint-to-be comes into much greater
focus.
What is most striking about Şaʿbân’s life, however, is not the success he
experienced in building a sub-branch of the order in Kastamonu. After all,
the hagiographer ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî would not have written such a substantial
work about him had he failed in that task. What is most striking about Fuʾâdî’s
work is the degree to which Şaʿbân-ı Veli appears in these narratives as a
saint capable of both personal and public failings, both in his own eyes and
that of his community. While the very term “hagiography” implies that one
will receive a laudatory, or even triumphant account of its subject’s life, the
reality of Şaʿbân-ı Veli’s life and career did not always lend itself to this type
of presentation. As a result, Fuʾâdî’s presentation of Şaʿbân’s life reads as a
fairly candid record of the realities that confronted budding Halveti leaders as
they strove to build their own following among the provincial populations of
the Ottoman Empire.
108

Genesis of a Sub-branch 109
. .
Şaʿbân-ı Veli’s Struggle to Establish Himself as a Halveti
Shaykh in Kastamonu
Given Şaʿbân’s experience as a shrewd assistant to his fellow shaykh-in-

training, Muslihuddîn Efendi, the audience of the Menâkıb might have been
forgiven for expecting that he would have been more successful when the time
came to take up a leadership position of his own. This would not be the case,
however. Şaʿbân, like so many other Muslim mystics who had reached advanced
stages on the mystical path, would find that he had to overcome some hidden
weaknesses of his own. The opening narratives about his time in Kastamonu
present his initial attempt to settle in the area of Seyyid Sünnetî’s old mosque
on the north-western side of the fortress as suffering from a major drawback – it
was on the edge of town and few of the townsfolk visited or lived near there.
So he had to move to a more centrally located mosque, known as the Cemâl
Ağa mosque, in order to rub shoulders with the local population.1 He initially
proved to be no more successful than Muslihuddîn Efendi had been in Konapa.
As Fuʾâdî recounted:
He came and he worked and meditated there for a time with the large crowd,
[but] never formed connections with the people. His tongue was [engaged] in the
remembrance of God, and his heart in the thought of God. Under the influence
of spiritual poverty and true annihilation, his actual poverty and poor state were
very visible. One day while he was waiting in the corner of solitude, as a test and
chastisement from God, a pure-hearted person saw the esteemed [shaykh]’s state
of utter destitution and said: “Hey there shaykh, you’ve sat in this mosque hungry
and alone for how long now! You’re a good and trustworthy person. It’s spring,
and every shepherd is necessary. Take our animals to pasture, let it be a salary for
you.” Şaʿbân said, with a smile on his gentle face, “I also came to take animals
like you to pasture,” indicating and alluding [to the fact] that he came from God
to guide the people of Kastamonu. That person didn’t understand the wish of the
shaykh, and said, “if you’re free from anxiety, you know best!”2
Şaʿbân’s determination in the face of desperation was admirable, and Fuʾâdî

turns this passage to a didactic end in order to educate his audience about avoid-
ing the temptations of the world. He also relates another anecdote about Şaʿbân
in which a friend tries to help him by washing his undershirt, only to have the
threadbare material rip apart in his hands as he tried to wash it. Loss of cloth-
ing in the cold environment of Kastamonu was no laughing matter, but Şaʿbân
responded by shrugging off the loss, saying, “the judgment is God’s; we came
into the world naked, and we’ll go out naked.”3 The hagiographer misses no

opportunity to illustrate Şaʿbân’s credentials as a mystic capable of denying
anything of worldly value, no matter how humble.
Yet it is critical that we not overlook another subtle message that lurks behind
the narrative, which is that aspirants to true mystical leadership cannot ignore
the broader society in which they live solely to focus on their own spiritual state
and relationship with God. The kind-hearted herdsman acts as a foil, delivering
a message from God bluntly reminding Şaʿbân that he is losing his way. This
intertwined with the very real concern of survival in a pre-modern age, as the
anecdote alludes to the difficulties a newly arrived stranger like Şaʿbân faced in
attempting to establish spiritual leadership in a community that still saw him as
an outsider. One cannot help but wonder how many Halveti shaykhs-to-be failed
to gain acceptance in the environments to which they were sent, perhaps giving
up and accepting more mundane ways of making a living, or even dying alone in
the corner of some mosque in the process, as Şaʿbân almost did. The story also
suggests how the general population of the Anatolian plateau in the early tenth/
sixteenth century had little understanding of the subtlety of Sufi aspirants like
Şaʿbân. It doesn’t take much imagination to suspect that the kind-hearted shep-
herd walked away from this encounter thinking his altruism had been wasted on
a person who was extraordinarily foolish, crazy, or both!
The modern reader is not the only one who could conceive of this narrative
as being a rather negative portrait of the saint’s early life. In compiling his work,
Fuʾâdî recognizes a competing narrative that was circulating on the authority of a
person he called “our brother by birth” (sulbi birâderimiz), Yâycı Haci Mehmed
Dede.4 Yâycı’s narrative framed the basic elements of this narrative in a somewhat
different light. Instead of placing the incident in Kastamonu, he narrated that this
event took place in the village of Çağa, east of Bolu, at a time in which Şaʿbân
was en route to take up his assignment in Kastamonu. When he reached Çağa,
he decided to undertake the traditional Halveti practice of the forty-day spiritual
retreat in Çağa’s Beg mosque, and after several days the people of the village began
to take a liking to him. A man came and said, “Sufi shaykh, you are poor, and a
way of making a living is necessary for you, and you also like solitude. Come and
let’s give the hand of animal-grazing to you; take our animals to pasture.” When
Şaʿbân replied, “I take animals out to pasture by the command of God, just let it be
that I don’t let the wolf take them!,” the uncomprehending shepherd responded by
exclaiming, “don’t wait, go out to pasture, may God make it easy [for you]!” Clearly,
this narrative frames Şaʿbân in a more positive light, whereby he is not failing in his
mission outside of being guilty of the minor error of temporarily neglecting his duty
to guide others, and perhaps expressing a fear of failure. Nevertheless, Fuʾâdî still
feels compelled to nervously interject a brief explanation of his own in the wake of
presenting his audience with these two competing narratives:

The wish to write down these anecdotes is not to insult [Şaʿbân’s] good renown.
But these suggestive actions, narrated in a demeaning form, come forth from God
to the prophets and saints to augment the attainment of the mystical state, to test
[them], and to serve as a warning to others. It is known to the mystics.5
Fuʾâdî sought to frame these events as a didactic tool aimed at teaching its audi-
ence how to avoid potential long-term mistakes on the Sufi path. That is, all
Sufi aspirants must maintain a sense of humility, as they may be reminded of
their failings by even the humblest and basest of people. In so doing, Fuʾâdî is
able to recast Şaʿbân’s weaknesses as strengths instead of censoring potentially
unflattering accounts of his protagonist’s early failings. In other words, Fuʾâdî
presents these stories as examples of necessary setbacks in the spiritual training
of every holy figure in the Islamic tradition, rather than letting the audience think
that this was a failure inherent only to Şaʿbân’s character. In turn, historians
realize that Fuʾâdî does not shy away from an element in his saint’s history that
might have raised doubts about his legacy among a contemporary audience. The
reader can recognize Fuʾâdî’s need to present the narratives in a constructive
manner for his own purposes, but also see the difficulties faced by shaykhs-to-be
at the earliest stages of their career reflected in them.
In addition to confronting his own problems and an indifference to his form
of mysticism among Kastamonu’s people, Şaʿbân also had to contend with the
fact that Kastamonu was not a spiritual vacuum, even if we leave aside the case
of Sünnetî Efendi. This was reflected in another anecdote narrated by Muhyiddîn
Efendi, the Friday prayer leader at the Atâbey Gazi mosque and a son of one of
Şaʿbân’s successors. Muhyiddîn prefaced his story with a remark stating that the
narrative was specifically intended to address the question of why Şaʿbân did
not immediately rise to prominence upon his arrival in Kastamonu, nor immedi-
ately manifest any acts of grace. The protagonist of the narrative is an otherwise
unknown shaykh of the Bayrâmî order by the name of ʿÎsâ Dede, who reacted to
a premonition of Şaʿbân’s arrival as follows:
ʿÎsâ Dede commanded his dervishes, “a master painter from the area of Bolu is
coming to Kastamonu; go and meet [him].” When he indicated [this], they went
as far as the place named Derbend and Soluk, and they saw that an impoverished
but rich-hearted Halveti dervish was coming alone and on foot, giving off a
ray of the light of annihilation in [both] his exterior and interior. The esteemed
[Şaʿbân] was aware through the inspiration of God that they were coming with
this intent, but he hid his true state, his secret and state being strong in his heart,
and he acted to preserve the secret. In short, those dervishes shook hands and
talked with the esteemed [Şaʿbân], but they didn’t get any reply from his mouth

that indicated his mastery or successorship. They continued to look [for another],
thinking, “this is not the person that the esteemed [shaykh] gave news about and
requested.”6
ʿÎsâ’s dervishes eventually returned empty-handed, although their shaykh

knew they had in fact encountered the person they were seeking. Nevertheless,
Muhyiddîn contended that he kept the secret hidden out of admiration for
Şaʿbân’s modesty.
While we could read this narrative as a means for reducing potential com-
petition in a later era between the adherents of two local orders by granting ʿÎsâ
Dede’s approval of Şaʿbân, the narrative also suggests an undercurrent of tension
or suspicion. Şaʿbân’s unwillingness to reveal himself to his questioners may
hint at a need to keep a low profile early in his career, perhaps to avoid scrutiny
from other more well-established shaykhs and their followers active in a smaller,
less anonymous urban settlement of the region. For his part, Fuʾâdî presents his
reader with two additional pieces of commentary that probably reflect the type of
questions previous audiences had directed at this tradition when it was related to
them. Knowing that his audience would struggle with the idea that a saint might
be unknown to his fellow men for much of his life, Fuʾâdî cites the desire of all
good dervishes to remain in a spiritually annihilated state, devoid of existence,
as an explanation for Şaʿbân’s avoidance of recognition. Şaʿbân had no use for
gaining worldly fame by making his presence known, and so he had no desire to
reveal himself to the group sent out to meet him. His unwillingness to take the
easy way forward, so to speak, became a critical building block for achieving
his later status. Fuʾâdî also felt compelled to explain ʿÎsâ Dede’s description of
Şaʿbân as a master painter. The greatest ability of a Sufi shaykh, says Fuʾâdî, is
to replace the bad character traits of his followers with good ones; thus, he has
the power of “painting them anew.” He concludes by linking this discussion to
another prominent local figure, a Kastamonu-based poet named Mahvî Efendi,
who praised Şaʿbân in his poetry for doing just that.7
Another example of reconciliation with other prominent Sufis in the region
references the Sufi leader Benli Sultan, who had established himself in the region
early in the tenth/sixteenth century. Like his contemporary Hayreddîn Tokâdî,
Benli Sultan had established a menzilhâne on the road linking Kastamonu to
Tosya at the point where it passes through the remote İlgaz mountain area (see
Figure 5). From this base, his foundation attracted all sorts of travelers and
passers-by as a way-station, in addition to a local, more devoted religious follow-
ing.8 Fuʾâdî links Şaʿbân to Benli Sultan’s legacy by arguing that he completed
the training of one of his more prominent followers, Muharrem Efendi, after
Benli Sultan had died. Şaʿbân also paid occasional visits to Benli Sultan, as one

Figure 5 The complex of Benli Sultan in the village of Ahlat near Mt İlgâz
anecdote recounts how Şaʿbân received a premonition of the premature death

of ʿOsmân Fakîh, a friend whom Benli Sultan had authorized to lead his funeral
prayer upon his death. Şaʿbân responded by commanding his followers to carve
a stone by the side of the road into a tombstone for ʿOsmân.9 Like the anecdotes
about ʿÎsâ Dede, these narratives can be read as reflecting potential sources of
tension between Şaʿbân’s followers and those of a more established local shaykh
of some significance. In particular, the anecdote about ʿOsmân demonstrated
how Şaʿbân’s knowledge of unseen events surpassed that of Benli Sultan on a
matter of considerable significance to him – who was designated to perform his
own funeral prayer!
Whatever the extent of these tensions with other pre-existing Sufi traditions,
Şaʿbân slowly began to adapt to his new home, albeit with limited success. He
started by renewing his attempts to revive the Halveti presence in the largely
abandoned Seyyid Sünnetî mosque. Making some inquiries among the local
population, he learned about Seyyid Sünnetî from some of the older people in
the area, and was told how he died before his son was old enough to take over his
position. Perhaps sensing an opportunity, Şaʿbân immediately stated his inten-
tion to perform the traditional forty-day retreat of the Halveti order in Sünnetî’s

old cell in the mosque. This act drew the attention of his contemporaries in
Kastamonu, who began to spread the word that a holy man had come and taken
up residence there. Şaʿbân soon found an assistant, Eyüb Halife, who later told of
his experiences in helping the aspiring saint. Fuʾâdî quotes his son, Abdülvâsiʿ
Dede, the prayer-leader for the Şaʿbâniye order, as relating:
Our father Eyüb Halife was a true friend of the esteemed [shaykh], and under-
took to send food to him every day in his cell in the mosque. By being distracted
somehow, he forgot to send [the food], and saying, “help, everyone; we forgot
the esteemed [shaykh] and he goes hungry at the mosque!” he hurried with
the food to the mosque with great regret. When he apologized, the esteemed
[shaykh], in order to give guidance, said, “this is the state of affairs, and this is
the lot and share of this place. The esteemed [shaykh Sünnetî ] who came before,
whose Sufi we could not be, experienced this struggle. Several days ago, I found
the crumbs of a mouse [living] in the wall, and thinking that he should not go
hungry, I didn’t eat all of it, and I left some of it for him. I gave myself up to God,
and didn’t demonstrate a need for anyone. Praise be to God, the gifts of God are
many; we didn’t go hungry,” and he revealed that he had found satiety through
divine nourishment and gave thanks and praise [to God].10
This act of humility may have marked a turning point. It succeeded in establish-
ing Şaʿbân’s credibility among key members of the community that he needed in
order to begin building his own order. Nevertheless, his initial attempts to revive
the Sünnetî Efendi complex remained unsuccessful, a point underlined by the
fact that Eyüb Halife forgot to go there to bring him food!
Eventually, a generous and pious man by the name of Seydi Efendi, whom
the local people called “Çetin Baba,” invited him to take up residence at the
Honsâlâr mosque. Since the Honsâlâr mosque complex was located on the other
side of town, within the settled area of the city, Şaʿbân Efendi accepted the
offer and abandoned the old Sünnetî mosque.11 It seems that his exile from his
preferred place of settlement would last for quite some time, as he did not return
there until the last decade of his life.
Having reached this point in the story, Fuʾâdî suddenly drifts off into what,
at first glance, appears to be a tangential discussion about an interpretation of a
snippet of a Qurʾanic verse, “God brings forward a people whom he loves and
who loves him.”12 He goes on to explain that according to this verse, when God
makes it known that a given believer has reached an advanced mystical stage
and truly loves God, the angels that surround the divine Throne become aware
of this. They then pass the word down through the various layers of angels in
the seven heavens, until it reaches the level of the angels who descend to earth.

Those angels who descend to earth by God’s command then inspire Muslims to
recognize these people through their love for God, and to love and follow them
in turn. This will then allow those so inspired to be saved on the Day of Judgment
by being resurrected with the beloved friends of God. Fuʾâdî goes on to clarify
this point by explaining that this favor is not bestowed on everyone, nor is it
bestowed randomly:
The angels . . . inspire that person who manifests angelic qualities, who is
attracted to self-improvement, who seeks out goodness to the extent that is possi-
ble, by achieving dominance over the human condition and the spiritual power in
his body. But that person that Satan wins over, by not disciplining his carnal soul
and not purifying his heart, and by being attracted to the carnal passions of the
soul . . . is not granted the angelic inspiration. If the situation were not like this,
then any rational person in the world would find the pious ones and the friends
of God, he would love [them], and he would become a dervish and a lover. No
ignorant and censuring people would remain, and they would all have followed
the people of God. If he is a follower and lover only because of the needs of the
carnal soul, without the aforementioned good condition in his body, he has no
forward progress, and he falls into the passions of the carnal soul, and censures
with doubt and suspicion on account of some little issue, and does not achieve
the wish to be guided on the path of God. He remains veiled from the councils of
the lords of the Knowers and the people of God.13
On closer examination, the message that Fuʾâdî seeks to convey here does not in
fact represent any digression at all. Rather, it is a justification of Şaʿbân’s appar-
ent lack of success in the early part of his career, based on the fact that it was not
the saint who was deficient, but the people around him who were in need of guid-
ance and the angelic inspiration necessary to recognize him. In addition, Fuʾâdî’s
remarks also introduce, for the first time in the narrative, another danger within
the community in the form of censurers of the practices of Sufi saints as being
un-Islamic. The lesson exhorts his audience to remain alert for otherwise hidden
holy figures, and to devote themselves wholeheartedly to the welfare of pious
Sufis. Fuʾâdî had good reason to stress this point: Şaʿbân’s life story reflected
an inherited struggle over the paradoxical tension inherent in the relationship
between the ideals of the Sufi path and the development of a greater public pres-
ence that accompanied success on it.
Fuʾâdî’s narratives strongly suggest that the idea of a heightened public
profile did not suit Şaʿbân’s temperament. After being offered the position at the
Honsâlâr mosque, Şaʿbân achieved a certain measure of success in conveying his
religious teachings to the local people through preaching there. The son of one

of Şaʿbân’s appointed successors, Haci İlyâs Efendi, recalled this period of the
saint’s career with admiration, and perhaps even a tinge of regret and disappoint-
ment. He related to Fuʾâdî that:
When the exoteric knowledge of the noble [Şaʿbân] became known, he used to
go to the pulpit in the Honsâlâr mosque to preach about exoteric knowledge in
the time of my father Hayreddîn’s training as a dervish and when I was a youth,
with the intent of increasing strength in [both] the order and esoteric guidance
through the divine wisdom. He used to comment on the exalted Qurʾan, and
transmit and explain the noble traditions of the Prophet connected with the
şeriʿat and the order, and [give] many pleasant sermons. They were sublime
gatherings! But with his esoteric guidance on the path becoming stronger, and no
need remaining for exoteric guidance, and increasing in the weakness of old age,
he left preaching and advising from the pulpit.14
Şaʿbân’s voluntary withdrawal from what had become at least a modestly suc-
cessful preaching career troubled the circle of followers he had amassed. Other
contemporary Halveti figures who preached in mosques cheerfully did so until
their deaths and saw no problem in maintaining this type of public presence
in the community. Thus, a development like this begged for an explanation:
Şaʿbân’s withdrawal, this account suggests, may have been on account of old
age. However, Fuʾâdî also includes other anonymous sources who suggest that
Şaʿbân offered a more important philosophical reason for withdrawal from
public preaching:
It is related that [Şaʿbân] used to say that knowledge of the hidden and existing,
and vanity don’t come to the guide who passes time with the basic principles in
the corner of solitude with honesty and uprightness, and taught the Knowledge of
Divine Providence on the surface of the hidden. Rather, it was a reason for com-
plete annihilation and advancement toward annihilation. But he used to warn his
successors and dervishes among the people of knowledge, saying, “if someone
were to go to the preacher’s pulpit or the dais [of a mosque] and give sermons and
advice, he has to be fearful of the possibility of mixing the nature and condition
of exoteric knowledge, which gives existence, into the knowledge of the hidden
and Divine, which is a cause of annihilation.”15
Given the pattern of anecdotes in which Şaʿbân is gently chided for hesitance in
engaging with the people he is supposed to be guiding, the historian gets a strong
sense that Şaʿbân never felt truly comfortable fulfilling the duties of guidance
with which he was charged.16 Interestingly enough, however, his arguments

about abandoning the world of existence bear an uncanny resemblance to that
of his contemporary in the Sünbüliye branch of the order in İstanbul, Yûsuf b.
Yaʿkûb el-Germiyânî. Just as in the case of Yûsuf and his son and hagiographer,
Sinâneddîn, Fuʾâdî and his contemporaries clearly felt the existence of a genera-
tional chasm between their predecessors in the order and themselves on the point
of the need for a public presence.17 Ottoman society and culture were changing,
not just in İstanbul, but also at the provincial level in Kastamonu. Anticipating
the cognitive dissonance that could emerge among his contemporaries, Fuʾâdî
interjects himself into the discussion again. He relayed a tensely worded warning
to those who might suggest that Şaʿbân’s intstructions required that Halveti
shaykhs engage in a form of self-marginalization vis-à-vis society:
But the [words] mingled with wisdom and enjoining of protection of the master
[Şaʿbân] are not absolute [in meaning]; they are contextually-based. He spoke
in absolute [terms] for emphasis in making them wary of this issue, meaning his
noble wish was this: If a person’s state and honor are good, and the attribute of
pride and vanity not present in his being, and if his spiritual annihilation, intel-
lect, state, and knowledge in mysticism are powerful, then he will not fall into
pride, vanity, materiality, or pleasure by preaching and admonishing on the dais
and [in the] pulpit. Now, his permission and acceptance are confirmed for the
trustworthy ones who are perpetually in esoteric guidance and who have not lost
their state or the purity of their gnosis in both the inner world and the real world,
because this situation is the situation and action of the prophets also. It is in no
way censured or forbidden! This apparent and manifest state and action would
never be suitable among the perfected ones of the great shaykhs . . . It would be
necessary to disprove the perfected ones’ being the heirs of the Prophets . . . and
[they would] be defective in their legacy . . . If [a shaykh] were not to choose to
preach and admonish while perfected and in [this] state, and if he were to focus
his state and action on esoteric guidance as much as possible while he was able,
no weakness would come to his state or to his honor. Free choice is preferable in
a perfected one, and the state of the perfected one is committed to the command
of God. God most High knows his wisdom, and the people of wisdom know
those who are like them.18
This message was so critical for his audience that Fuʾâdî invoked it a second
time in a later section of the hagiography, when introducing anecdotes about
the successorship of Haci İlyâs’s father, Hayreddîn Efendi (d. 987/1579), as the
second leader of the Şaʿbâniye order. By doing so, he guaranteed that if his work
was introduced to an audience as isolated parts, rather than as a unified whole,
the lessons about the nature and importance of preaching in this context would

not be overlooked!19 Just as in the stories of Şaʿbân’s encounter with the shep-
herd, Fuʾâdî once again felt obligated to defend his protagonist from skepticism
about his actions. But what made this such a sensitive subject for the hagiogra-
phy’s potential audience?
Most likely, this narrative ran contrary to expectations by Fuʾâdî’s time. By
the early eleventh/seventeenth century, the figure of a Sufi leader engaged in
preaching in mosques was a common sight – but it was not without its contro-
versies either. The generation of Halveti figures like Şaʿbân-ı Veli, who came of
age in the first half of the tenth/sixteenth century, had reservations about tying
their mysticism too closely to public (and by extension, political) positions in
society. This likely stemmed from their bad experiences during Selim I’s and his
son Süleymân’s reigns, where many Sufis risked getting caught up in the witch
hunt for Safavid sympathizers that saw the imprisonment and even execution of
a number of mystics.20 On the other hand, the generation that Fuʾâdî and his con-
temporaries represented at the turn of the eleventh/seventeenth century no longer
found these reservations compatible with effective strategy, and had to develop
rationales to address the discrepancy. This was a reflection of the growing
tension between Halveti Sufis and their detractors in Ottoman public discourse,
which was already being felt by the time that Fuʾâdî assumed the leadership of
the Şaʿbâniye.21
.
Conflicts within the Şaʿbâniye Sub-branch under
.
Şaʿbân-ı Veli
Whatever Şaʿbân’s reticence as a public figure, this did not translate into out-
right avoidance of organizing a following in Kastamonu and its environs. It is
noteworthy that Şaʿbân laid down a rule that no more than one successor could
operate within a given region of the countryside. The immediate situation that
sparked this ruling came in response to a crisis involving one of Şaʿbân’s succes-
sors, ʿAlî Dede, about whom we know very little aside from the fact that he had
left his position and disappeared. Yet in a rejection of his earlier experience as
an assistant to Muslihuddîn Efendi in Konrapa, Şaʿbân refused to accede to his
dervishes’ request to send them a new successor in his place:
When it appeared the prayer rug of the quarter would remain empty, and some
of his dervishes requested a successor in his place, the lord [Şaʿbân], being the
sovereign of wisdom of the city of the province [of Kastamonu], said, “is there
absolutely nothing left from his hırka22 or other objects in the lodge where he
lived and gave guidance?” After they responded, “there is,” the lord [Şaʿbân]
commanded: “Dervishes! Even if there were only a carpet or rush matting

in place of a successor, one does not immediately send a successor in its
place.”23
Şaʿbân’s cautious response to the situation indicates that he was wary of attempts
to replace one of his successors in an arbitrary manner, and concerned about
the potential for conflict among his successors if two of them came to establish
themselves in the same location. Thus, Şaʿbân seized on the opportunity that the
crisis generated to establish a clearer policy for how and when a successor could
be removed from a position, or a new one introduced to a region:
While [a successor] is teaching principles and guiding in a small city (küçük

şehir) or town (kasaba), it is never suitable that another successor head off to
that place and live there, since he will not be leader for all of them, and the leader
[there] will not be under his command. When he reaches that town, it is against
proper etiquette to leave his own prayer rug and to pray,24 unless [the other suc-
cessor’s] abandonment [of his post] has been established, or he demonstrates a
state of being opposed [to the order’s principles]; then it is deemed proper to
depose [him]. At that time, he who is the leader of all and the head of the district
removes him, and shall choose another person to sit in his place. Or, if a city
becomes big, each of its neighborhoods should be judged to be a town (kasaba).
At that point it is suitable [to place additional successors]. And this specific point
is an area which will be strictly adhered to!25
The firm directive implied in Şaʿbân’s final statement was no idle warning. It
seems that some degree of rebellion threatened the nascent Şaʿbâniye sub-branch
on a number of occasions during Şaʿbân’s lifetime. Şaʿbân’s own position as
head of the order in Kastamonu was even challenged at one point, which angered
the shaykh to the point that he challenged the perpetrators to follow through on
their own audacity and witness the consequences:
Nurullah Efendi, famous for his perfection, while guiding in a place called the
Honsâlâr mosque in [the village of] Dâdây, wanted to send a successor to the
people of Kastamonu. But he was warned about the spiritual power of Şaʿbân
Efendi, and couldn’t send anyone, nor could he persuade anyone to come. While
on the brink of rebellion, a dervish was found there named Mustafa Dede, who
was among the dervishes of Nebi Efendi in the town of İlisu, and is still alive
today. Because he was of prominent character, Mustafa Dede was sent [by
Nurullah], thinking, “let’s see, does the noble one accept this specific point?”
When Mustafa Dede explained his wishes to the esteemed [Şaʿbân], he thought
for a time, and on account of knowing that the wishes of these people were

against the noble principles and the wisdom of God, he said: “Dervish! One
guide is enough to guide the seekers of a province. Duality is not appropriate; it
is a reason for discord.” When that dervish spoke again, Şaʿbân showed much
firmness to avoid [further] dispute, and said, “Mustafa Dede, on the path of the
saints, and in their presence, stubbornness, impertinence, criticism and opposi-
tion are not appropriate . . .” When this report reached Nurullah Efendi, by being
fixed in a perfected state and enlightened with the light of etiquette, he under-
stood the real situation, and [his party] renounced [their goal] with submission
and acceptance.26
While Şaʿbân’s triumph over his adversaries as a conclusion to this anecdote is

not surprising, the existence of this report in the hagiography is. While clashes
among potential successors to the legacy of a deceased shaykh as head of a
branch of the Halveti order were not uncommon,27 to challenge a living shaykh’s
control over his own branch of the order on his home ground after he had become
established does not appear in any other known Halveti hagiographical source of
which I am aware.
This is indicative of a couple of possibilities. The first follows from what we
have seen of Şaʿbân’s life up to this point, which is that he was not possessed
of the most effective personality to take on a broader public leadership role in
the region, a role to which he did not really aspire. The shaykh continued to be a
quiet and withdrawn individual, especially in his later years. Fuʾâdî notes:
When the sultan became old, and weakness came to his body, he was attracted
to seclusion and hiding away, like Pîr ʿÖmer [el-]Halvetî. He used to enter the
blessed cells which are now a place of visitation in his lodge, which was the place
of Seyyid Sünnetî’s residence. It is related that he didn’t see the world for seven
years, and he busied himself in worship and obedience to God most High in the
station of devotion and witnessing of the Divine.28
Fuʾâdî, by invoking the eponymous ʿÖmer el-Halvetî, establishes an unimpeach-

able model to which Şaʿbân could be compared as a way of legitimizing his
behavior.29 On the other hand, some of his other successors beyond Kastamonu
proper may have aspired to more activist roles in establishing the order in the
political and social lives of their communities, rather than following Şaʿbân’s
lead in valuing seclusion. The anecdote may also indicate that proliferating sub-
branches like the Şaʿbâniye, founded in predominantly rural areas, lacked a cen-
tralized base in the larger population centers of the Ottoman Empire that allowed
for closer and more frequent contact between shaykhs and their successors. As a
result, they were more fractious and contested the dynamics of power within the

order. We even see elements of this contest reflected in Şaʿbân’s own career, as
he managed to lay a successful claim to Seyyid Sünnetî’s defunct legacy despite
lacking direct contact.
Fuʾâdî, with the perspective of hindsight, underscores Şaʿbân’s point by
citing an allusion common to both Sufi and “mirrors for princes” literature that
defines the power of temporal rulers and Sufi leaders as belonging to two sepa-
rate spheres. He likens the issue of multiple successors competing or overlapping
in a single area as analogous to the insoluble problem of two political rulers
trying to exist in the same realm, remarking that:
[Şaʿbân]’s noble wish is that just as it is not proper to openly seat two rulers
in one country, the successors of shaykhs are also like that. The guidance of
shaykhs and manifest sovereignty are both a manifestation of the power of dis-
posal [given by] God. They are patterned after each other.30
In other words, the authority of kings and sultans was the exoteric manifestation
of God-given power, while the authority of Sufi shaykhs and their successors is
the esoteric and spiritual manifestation of this power. This policy established dis-
tinct spheres of influence in the various population centers of northern Anatolia,
and Şaʿbân (and Fuʾâdî)’s vision would come to exemplify the Şaʿbâniye
shaykhs’ strategies in establishing their order throughout the Ottoman domains
in the eleventh/seventeenth century.
It is nevertheless implied in Fuʾâdî’s narrative that this policy objective had
become more successfully established at the time he wrote the Menâkıb-ı Şaʿbân
than it had been in Şaʿbân’s own lifetime. While Şaʿbân may have successfully
forestalled the potential dissenting movements represented by Nurullah Efendi
and his followers, Fuʾâdî informs us that others did in fact act to challenge
Şaʿbân’s status as head of the order, or even abandoned the order outright in
favor of trying to propagate the teachings of others:
While it was established that Şaʿbân Efendi was the Pole [of the Age] (kutb),31
some people deceived in their own opinion and covered with the veil of existence
were not able to know the exalted station of the master [Şaʿbân] in their own time,
and they did not understand his spiritual power after he departed to the world of
souls. They also didn’t understand the states and powers of the noble ones who
guided according to the divine secret on his prayer rug after him. They did not
believe them [to be] perfected ones, but deficient and [people] to be surpassed,
and they spread prayer rugs among the people of Kastamonu from their own
lines of descent (silsile) and other lines of descent, and they were [aiming] in the
direction of [giving] guidance. But none of their guidance became established,

and their lines of descent didn’t become permanent; they became nonexistent and
disappeared. This fact is clearly known and witnessed by everyone in Kastamonu
and other places.32
Fuʾâdî, speaking at a time when the Şaʿbâniye branch of the Halveti order had
become more firmly established as part of Ottoman society, was able to dismiss
attempts to abandon Şaʿbân and his legacy as an impotent challenge, doomed to
failure. For the historian, however, the narrative is a rare concession that Şaʿbân’s
success in establishing his order was by no means a foregone conclusion. Many
of his countrymen, indeed, even some of his own followers, considered him defi-
cient enough as a spiritual leader that they sought to present themselves as cred-
ible alternatives for spiritual guidance within Kastamonu itself, to say nothing
of other places. In sum, in its politics and organization, the Şaʿbâniye order in
the mid-tenth/sixteenth century most likely suffered from schisms and wayward
followers during the process of establishment.
Even with benefit of hindsight, Fuʾâdî did not miss the chance to criticize any
potential claimants to the leadership of the Şaʿbâniye order who might challenge
the order’s hierarchy. In a lengthy digression, he continued by directly address-
ing his audience on the danger posed by a lack of etiquette (edeb):
My noble brothers! According to the understanding [of the Arabic proverb] “God
is merciful in a matter; he knows its amount and he doesn’t exceed its bounds,”
everyone must know his own state and place on every specific point. It is also
necessary to know the power of the exalted, aged, and noble ones among the
shaykhs and others. Not knowing the states and powers of high and noble ones
is a product of not knowing his own state and measure. There is no more useless
quality in a human being than this . . . Not knowing their states and powers, or
knowing but not observing and respecting their rights, is a product of lack of
propriety. Those who abandon etiquette and do not know the power of the people
of ability will not find fortune or perfection. He who does not stay close and keep
company with the people of good etiquette, and the noble ones who act accord-
ing to the understanding “all of mysticism is etiquette” . . . and he who keeps
company with rude and obnoxious people and converses with and forms bonds
with them, will not find nobility or prosperity.33
The key to this entire argument rests on the term edeb. In the context of the
Ottoman mystical orders of the ninth/fifteenth and tenth/sixteenth centuries,
proper etiquette was linked to a form of exaggerated deference that dominated
social relations between a shaykh and his followers. However, the principle
extended well beyond mysticism itself. In any political or social context in

Ottoman society, brashly challenging one’s social superiors in the Ottoman
hierarchy was generally frowned upon for the simple reason that the power
struggle that would ensue would breed chaos and disorder. Indeed, the writings
of Ottomans from the elite classes often reflect a disdain for upstarts who sought
to displace established elites in various walks of life; the works of the great
contemporary Ottoman historian of this period, Gelibolulu Mustafa ʿAlî, are an
excellent example.34 This enjoined system of polite deference to one’s superiors,
however, was taken to extremes in the ideal Sufi framework. Earlier Sufi intel-
lectuals and theorists had advocated a relationship between guide and seeker
whereby the seeker should be like a corpse in the hands of his guide, or a lump
of clay that should be fashioned as the master saw fit. To fail to surrender one’s
agency to the shaykh and obey his will, even in situations that seemed problem-
atic, were a violation of good mystical edeb.35 Fuʾâdî, much like Mustafa ʿAlî,
was aware of pressures that could arise from a new generation of upstarts. The
only difference was that his career was located in the sphere of religious rather
than courtly or administrative politics. He therefore utilized these long estab-
lished principles to defend and uphold the established order as being based on
the penultimate rung of the divine hierarchy, stating:
It is necessary to be humble towards and fear exalted ones, because the per-
fected men who become the pole of the world, by truly knowing the actions and
attributes of God Most High, and by taking their spiritual powers from God the
Guider himself through their power’s unification with the manifestation of
the divine essence, and with their power’s being a divinely granted power, appear
with kindness and favor to the seekers and noble ones who respect the rules of the
şeriʿat and the order. They act with the attribute of divine wrath, and come out
against those who depart from proper etiquette and who do not understand [their
own] state and amount. Because they are assistants to God, their acceptance is the
acceptance of God, and their wish is God’s wish. As in the case of the Messenger
of God, and the Prophet Hızır, their power of disposal in every place appears by
the command and will of God.36
Fuʾâdî’s argument was that to show disrespect toward those superior in sanctity
is to defy God himself – an unenviable position for any aspiring Sufi to place
himself in! Nevertheless, the basic responsibilities inherent in this relationship
did not rest solely with the shaykh’s followers. Fuʾâdî also noted the characteris-
tics that mark a proper spiritual guide deserving of the edeb relationship:
But this [power of disposal] is not so that . . . they shall act according to their
own desires and the requirements of their carnal souls, and they should not

evince avarice, rancor, malice, envy, and other negative qualities like other
people. Don’t you see that the powers of those who act according to a negative
attribute and the malice of the carnal soul are ephemeral, and they don’t achieve
their wishes? Rather, they will also fall into pain and suffering. Şaʿbân Efendi,
on account of his working with the aforementioned divine power and ability, on
every specific point . . . the mark of his powers is present and enduring.37
The perpetuation of Şaʿbân’s legacy in the decades after his death therefore
served as proof that his mastery of the etiquette of Halveti mysticism, and the
spiritual qualities that brought him close to God, were of a superior quality and
demanded respect. His opponents’ failure to displace or exceed his spiritual
legacy likewise served as proof that they lacked the necessary attributes to win
God’s favor. On the whole, Fuʾâdî’s philosophy and argumentation conveyed
a simple message to his audience: success in the propagation of a branch of the
order is the best proof of sainthood. To underscore this point, he cited another
informant, Erzerumî Hasan Dede, on how Şaʿbân had trained 360 successors to
his legacy and dispatched them throughout the Ottoman domains.38
.
Şaʿban-ı Veli’s Network of Support and his Opponents, in
Kastamonu and Beyond
All this suggests something else, however, which is that force of personality was
not the only reason for the success of Şaʿbân’s mission in Kastamonu. He also
built personal relationships with other prominent scholarly figures in the region.
We cannot recover the significance of all of these figures; some appear as names
that likely had resonance only for Kastamonu residents of centuries past.39 Still,
Şaʿbân was also able to establish relationships with other prominent figures, not
all of whom were Kastamonu-based. In particular, the hagiography mentions
two other Ottoman figures who provided critical support to Şaʿbân during his
lifetime.
The first was Küreli Mehmed Çelebi, whose origins lay in the mining center
of Küre-i Nühâs in the mountains north of Kastamonu. Despite his humble
origins, he had succeeded in traveling to İstanbul and participating in the schol-
arly circles of the famed Ottoman jurist Ebusüʿûd Efendi (d. 980/1573), where
he made a positive impression.40 More importantly, however, he had once been
a scholar who had publicly attacked Sufi practices, but repented of his anti-Sufi
positions to become Şaʿbân’s follower. When his former scholarly colleagues
expressed astonishment at his abrupt change of heart, he replied that he had
fallen into a divine rapture whose resolution could not be found in any book or
tract. Finally, he presented his case to Şaʿbân, who was able to solve his problem

merely by uttering a single word. He concluded by remarking, “how can I not
become the dervish and servant of a perfected guide like him?”41 While Küreli
Mehmed’s repute was perhaps mostly local in nature – there exists no known
corroboration for his activities in other Ottoman biographical sources – the fact
that he had rubbed shoulders with prominent figures of the capital would have
given him a legitimacy that Kastamonu’s population would have respected. It
also would have given the doctrine of sainthood an important defender who had
defected from a growing body of critics.
A second, more important, figure who would come to play a critical role
in the development of the Şaʿbâniye was Kastamonulu Muharrem Efendi (d.
984/1576). Unlike Küreli Mehmed, a prominent Ottoman biographical source
corroborates the existence of Muharrem Efendi, and recounts that he was initially
a successor-in-training to Benli Sultan. We have encountered both in the afore-
mentioned discussion of Şaʿbân’s relationship with Benli Sultan as a potential
pre-existing Sufi competitor. According to an Ottoman contemporary, Sufi aspir-
ants like Muharrem Efendi who had the courage to follow Benli Sultan to his
remote residence utilized the location as a way of breaking away from “love of
the world.”42 Yet in an echo of a changing generation, Muharrem Efendi proved
to be a more publicly renowned and enduring figure in powerful Ottoman circles
than his reclusive teacher. Diverging from the model espoused by Benli Sultan
(and Hayreddîn Tokâdî), he chose to emerge from the remoteness of the menzil-
hâne after the death of his master. He must have taken up prominent positions in
the religious hierarchy in İstanbul by the mid-tenth/sixteenth century, as noted
by an entry on him by the Ottoman biographer Taşköprüzâde (d. 968/1561), who
completed his work in 965/1558.43
Luckily, and unusually, Taşköprüzâde’s successor and continuator, Nevʿîzâde
ʿAtâʾî, was able to elaborate more fully on the career of Muharrem Efendi during
the latter years of Sultan Süleyman’s reign:
He came forth from the land of Kastamonu . . . and he benefitted from his service
to the scholars of the age, İsrâfîlzâde and Çivîzâde.44 After the labors of struggle
and giving of the sweets of the goal of conversation in the house of benefit of
the most learned of his time and moment, Saʿdî Efendi,45 he formally pledged
allegiance to Benli Muhyiddîn Efendi, among the notables of the Halvetî order
. . .After that, he gained the object of companionship . . . with the notables of
the Bayramî order. When his fame and reputation became world-renowned by
preaching, advising, and the transmitting of Prophetic tradition and commentary
[on the Qurʾan] in some of the lands of Islam, he was invited to İstanbul and
was appointed with a daily 30-akçe [silver coin] stipend to the Sufi Mehmed
Paşa school of Prophetic tradition (dâruʾl-hâdis) . . . When Sultan Süleyman

completed his noble mosque in Zuʾl-hicce of [the year] 964 (1557) . . . the dais of
preaching and advising was appointed to these people [of that school]. He made
commentary on the speech of [God] on that dais . . . for a long time, and taught
repeatedly the commentaries of Beyzâvî and Kaşşâfî [two renowned medieval
scholars of Islamic law]. [He died] at the end of Cemâziyüʾl-evvel in [the year]
983 (1576) . . .46
What is striking about this account of Muharrem Efendi’s educational pedi-

gree is that one of his prominent teachers in his formative years was one of the
most inflexible anti-Sufi personalities active during Sultan Süleyman’s reign.
Çivîzâde’s career was marked by rigidity on any number of controversial reli-
gious questions. This often alienated him from his colleagues, and even the
sultan himself, as exemplified by a decree condemning the establishment of
pious foundations (evkâf) with gold or silver money. He also condemned the
works of revered but controversial Sufi masters like Ibn al-ʿArabî, Mevlânâ
Celâlüddîn Rûmî, and the Egyptian saint Shaykh ʿUmar b. al-Fârid (d. 1235),47 a
position which deeply disturbed many of his fellow scholars and may have con-
tributed to his dismissal from the post of Grand Müfti in 948/1542.48 It is equally
important to note that he was also reputed to have been a prominent student of
the infamous anti-Halveti jurisprudent, Sarı Gürz, who was a nemesis of the
İstanbul-based branches of the Halveti order and attacked the legitimacy of their
semâʿand devrân.49
The difficulties in interpreting this connection might be mitigated by the
mention of İsrâfîlzâde, a sometime rival to Çivîzâde who had been passed over
for a teaching post in one of the most prestigious medreses in 935/1529. He was
also known for his interest in the rational sciences (ʿulûm-i ʿakliye), and was
once the target of an inquisition about his beliefs by Çivîzâde and several other
prominent scholars. Despite the dangers, he was able to withstand the political
pressure and preserve his career, and Taşköprüzâde personally recalls that one
of his tracts achieved fame during the time he was a teacher (dânişmend) in the
capital.50
What this suggests is that Muharrem Efendi, like so many other Sufis-to-be,
began his career by studying with a wide variety of teachers, some of whom
were stringent critics of Sufism and others who were not. His eventual support
of Şaʿbân indicates that he ultimately came to repudiate the views of anti-Sufi
hardliners like Çivîzâde. This underscores the historiographical problems that
accompany Ottoman biographical literature produced in the capital – for this
pro-Sufism position is a detail that ʿAtâʾî’s biographical entry does not explicitly
report.
Saʿdî Çelebi, on the other hand, was probably the most important influence

on his early career by virtue of the fact that both men had roots in the province
of Kastamonu. Saʿdî was reported to have come from one of the towns and vil-
lages either in the vicinity of Kastamonu or nearby Sinop. In fact, Saʿdî may
have acted as the primary patron to the young scholar, enabling him to enter and
mix with the most prominent scholarly circles in the capital. Unfortunately, our
biographical sources are not nearly as forthcoming about Saʿdî Çelebi’s impact
on the religious debates of his day, perhaps because he sought a more moderate
position with regard to those issues.51
The chronology of these figures indicate that Muharrem Efendi abandoned
the scholarly circles of the capital and joined Benli Sultan’s remote circle on
İlgâz mountain. He did not complete his Sufi training there; ʿAtâʾî suggests
that he established relationships with the shaykhs of the Bayrâmî order instead.
ʿAtâʾî’s presentation of Muharrem Efendi’s career is potentially at odds with
that of Fuʾâdî, who claims that S¸aʿbân stepped in to complete Muharrem’s
training after Benli’s untimely death. Which account is more accurate? Some
might accuse Fuʾâdî of exaggerating a friendship between the two men into a
standard Sufi master–disciple relationship. On the other hand, it is equally clear
that Muharrem Efendi never recognized any discrepancy between a career in
the scholarly hierarchy and Sufi practices.52 He may have leaned more toward
cultivating the companionship of Sufi shaykhs without actually pledging
himself to any specific order. We might compare him to the notable Persian
Sufi devotee ʿAbd al-Rahman Jâmî, who was attracted to the Nakşbendîs and
has provided important narrative accounts about their history, but never really
became a fully-fledged follower of any given shaykh within that tradition.53 We
do know that Muharrem Efendi, like Jâmî, authored a work about the saints,
and was able to quote freely from long-established Sufi biographical collections
such as the Tezkîretüʾl-Evliyâ of Ferîdüddîn ʿAttâr (d. 617/1221) in his public
discourse.54
Muharrem Efendi would go on to play the penultimate role in cementing
Şaʿbân’s legacy among the people of Kastamonu by delivering a eulogy at
Şaʿbân’s funeral that called on the population to recognize his extraordinary nature
(see Chapter 5). These connections with prominent local personalities gave Fuʾâdî
another weapon to counter the mixed reception that Şaʿbân may have received
during his own lifetime. In addition to confronting the perception that Şaʿbân was
too withdrawn to be taken seriously as a Halveti leader, Fuʾâdî also commented
on a misperception that Şaʿbân was an uneducated or illiterate (ümmî) person,55 a
view that ignored his scholarly training in İstanbul early in his life:
While there was so much of the rational and scriptural sciences in the manifesta-
tion of the prophetic heritage . . . of that lord of the people of annihilation, he

appeared in the form of an uneducated person like the pole of the Arabs, Habîb-i
ʿAcemî,56 and he used to be wary of exoteric knowledge. Because just as knowl-
edge of the esoteric and divine mysteries is a reason for annihilation and unity,
exoteric knowledge is usually a reason for materiality and multiplicity. Because
of this, Şaʿbân always behaved like a dervish, and he never engaged in intellec-
tual discussions. Everyone thought he was uneducated.57
Fuʾâdî went on to relate how one prominent figure within the broader framework
of the Halveti order learned this the hard way. One of the successors of Sünbül
Efendi, a man by the name of Mahmûd Efendi, was teaching in a village called
Okçular in the area of his home region of Araç.58 One night, he saw the Prophet
in a dream. When he requested increased advancement, the Prophet gave him
good tidings that he would attain superior perfection at the hands of a great pole
of his time. After this vision, Mahmûd Efendi began to hear scattered reports
about Şaʿbân Efendi’s activities in Kastamonu. Fuʾâdî related that his own
spiritual guide and predecessor as leader of the Şaʿbâniye, Muhyiddîn Efendi
(d. 1012/1604), told him that when Muhyiddîn was still learning the Sufi path
under Şaʿbân, he came to Kastamonu with Mahmûd Efendi. Mahmûd related
his dream, but to test Mahmûd’s ability to be humble and submit to him, Şaʿbân
refused to interpret it. After three days of speaking about his dream, only to see
Şaʿbân remain silent, a tear rolled from Mahmûd’s eye, and he said that although
he was among the successors of Sünbül Efendi, he needed Şaʿbân’s help to
achieve perfection, and renounced his life as Sünbül Efendi’s follower and suc-
cessor. Having demonstrated complete submission, Şaʿbân finally accepted his
sincerity and interpreted the events in his dream. Only then did Mahmûd learn
what Şaʿbân kept secret from his contemporaries: he was an extremely well-
educated individual.59
As a corollary, Fuʾâdî also stressed that Şaʿbân upheld exoteric aspects of
Muslim sacred law, and did not tend toward the wilder extremes of ecstatic
mysticism. He reported that Şaʿbân expressed this to his followers in a simple
analogy about the relationship between exoteric law (şeriʿat) and the mystical
path (tarikat). The şeriʿat represented the outer shell of an almond or the skin
of a piece of fruit, and the tarikat represented the tasty inner core desired by
the seeker. However, the seeker should not go the route of the atheist (mülhid)
by saying that the shell or peel can be thrown away once the desired object is
reached. Instead, the seeker should visualize it as a process of making an almond
ripen on a tree. If the shell doesn’t develop properly, then the tasty inner part fails
to develop properly and the entire almond goes rotten.60
Fuʾâdî also includes a defensive anecdote in which some of the congregation
of a mosque witnessed one of Şaʿbân’s dervishes falling into a mystical state

whereby he did not perform his prayers correctly; he remained stuck in a stand-
ing, kneeling, or prostrate position for long periods of time. When the imam of
the mosque, Seydî Sâlih Halife, consulted Şaʿbân on the matter, Şaʿbân initially
defended his follower. However, when he questioned the dervish in private, he
recognized that the dervish’s rationale for behaving in this way was flawed, and
castigated him for deviating from the path:
[Şaʿbân] asked, “my dervish, when you return to the real world from the state of
immersion which occurs while you are praying, do you pray that prayer again?”
. . . [Upon receiving a negative response] that source of the şeriʿat and mine of
piety [Şaʿbân] was distressed at that dervish. He commanded, “hey dervish, what
are you saying, you speak wrongly! It is necessary to pray again with the known
principles. If you don’t pray [again] it is atheism and unbelief. If [you are] a
dervish and if [you are] of the people of perfecting [the path], it is necessary to
respect the noble law as much as possible . . .”61
These anecdotes illustrate the strategy that Şaʿbân employed in training his
dervishes; a strict, shariʿa-based mysticism that probably would have won the
approval of Abû Hamîd al-Ghazâlî, another synthesizer of mysticism and exo-
teric Islamic doctrines.62 The foundations of this earlier medieval synthesis then
merged with the overlay of external symbols and systematic training of later
Sufi orders like that Halveti in subsequent generations. What Şaʿbân did was to
translate that legacy by expressing ideas in a simple and direct language that his
provincial countrymen could understand. Yet historians should also not ignore
that Fuʾâdî’s strategic use of these anecdotes could clarify and recast some of the
potentially anti-exoteric statements and behaviors that Şaʿbân exhibited in other
situations.
The defensive character of the hagiography is underscored by other anec-
dotes that suggest that Şaʿbân could not avoid the drum beat of the ever present
anti-Sufi critique, even when upholding the exoteric Islam as the primary refer-
ent for his followers’ instruction. As he grew more successful at the Honsâlâr
mosque in attracting a circle of followers to his preaching and teaching, others in
the town censured and attempted to remove him from his position there:
But those who were deficient, [the] uneducated shaykhs of the exoteric schol-
ars who didn’t know [Şaʿbân’s] state, and those who were uncomprehending
and trouble-making people, followed their own perverse unfounded opinion
. . . and with Satanic urges and the misleading of the carnal passions, [they]
censured the Halveti shaykhs and their dervishes. Those who thought badly [of
the shaykh], their own statements, actions and other states appeared pleasing to

them, according to the verse: “Satan made their deeds look attractive to them,
and turned them from the path.”63 While bound with the chain of the love of the
world, and the shackle of the hopes of the carnal soul, they did not avoid great
sin, bad thinking and fanaticism, and left themselves in the manner and sense of
the verse: “We will put iron collars on their necks.”64 They censured and inter-
fered with the practice, garb, and cloaks of the order of those who are in state
of divine nearness and the masters of the mystics, in the condition of the verse:
“Surely the devotees will drink cups flavored with palm blossoms.”65 They used
to refer [to the mystics] with words that were not suitable to the dignity of the
noble [Şaʿbân], God forfend, and they denied that the shaykhs were the people of
God, and [denied] their states with ignorant and nasty attributions.66
Fuʾâdî’s strategic use of verses from the Qurʾan to divide the censurers from
the Sufis, and, indeed, the wider Muslim community, was a useful tactic in
defending the order’s foundations from polemical attacks. It could neutralize
the detractors of Sufism by employing the same rhetorical strategy that they
did. Establishing Qurʾanic support in any battle for religious legitimacy was
fundamental in the polemics that came to mark the early modern period, and
Fuʾâdî recognized the need to ground the legitimacy of the Halveti order in a
Qurʾan- and tradition-based discourse. The accusations of the censurers revolved
around the idea that Halveti shaykhs like Şaʿbân were attempting to establish a
self-serving claim to superiority over others that God never granted to individual
members of mankind. Fuʾâdî’s rhetoric turned the tables on anti-Sufi censurers,
accusing them of having exceeded the bounds of their own legitimacy through
arrogance about the level of their own knowledge.
Nevertheless, rhetorical cleverness was not enough to win this polemical
battle, and Fuʾâdî drove home the additional point that the censurers paid a
heavy price for their attacks on Şaʿbân and the tarikat-based Sufism of their era.
In a thinly veiled allusion to the case of Küreli Mehmed Çelebi’s reconsideration
of his anti-Sufi feelings, Fuʾâdî remarks:
Some of those who censured Şaʿbân and thought badly about [him] without any
good reason were destroyed by God’s command and will, [while] others aban-
doned their censure by encountering the power of the saints through Şaʿbân’s
grace and God’s help and guidance. The censure of the censurers and the harm
[caused by] the people of envy, outside of those who became the disciples and
followers of the lord [Şaʿbân], came to naught. Since God was on the side of the
noble one, his own dervishes and successors were in a tranquil state of divine
purity, and his detractors were held back from the knowledge of God and the
condition and perfection of the people of God. The sign of these conditions is

manifest and enduring in the [survival of the] silsile and lodge at the present
[time].67
Once again, the success and survival of the Şaʿbâniye after their founder’s death
was invoked as proof that the accusations against their legacy were unfounded.
Yet in structuring the hagiography, Fuʾâdî was not satisfied with merely stating
this basic point; he also included a graphic example demonstrating the fate of
those who denigrated Şaʿbân and the Halveti path. Drawing on the testimony of
one Memî Hoca Efendi to illustrate the point, he related that:
[A] knowledgeable and virtuous person by the name of Evliyâ Şücâʿ came to
Kastamonu. While [I] was coming with our fellow city-dweller Bilâl Halife
and learning from him, the aforementioned Evliyâ Şücâʿ used to say, “it is the
Halveti [shaykhs who are to blame]” in the pulpits, on the daises and in the other
gatherings, and launch into his own unfounded opinion on the issue of the Sufi
devrân,68 and attack and impugn with cursing and vituperation about other states
of which he knew nothing. God forfend, he used to say words not suitable to
the dignity of the shaykh. On account of being one of the notable scholars, he
used to make people think more poorly of the master on account of his words.
But the noble one heard and knew, and was tolerant and forbearing, and used to
commend the matter to God. One day, [Şücâʿ] became sick by the will of God.
While the two of us, Bilâl Halife and I, were looking after [him], one night he
opened his eyes and said, “whatever shall happen to me, it is because I interfered
with and attacked Şaʿbân Dede. Bring [him] to me, and let us acknowledge his
claim,” and he sent Bilâl Halife. When he came, the noble one, while knowing
his substance, never showed abstention or affliction. When [Şaʿbân] wished to
come, because of his good moral [character], some of the dervishes said, “that
person called you a great swine and an atheist among many people in the pulpits
and [on the] daises, and made so much slander and censure like this. Are you
going to him?” Şaʿbân set out, replying, “it doesn’t matter; he did it without
knowing; this situation comes to us and those like us. The lot of this position
[of being a Halveti shaykh] is like this; let him be accepted by us. A person of
knowledge is a brother; he forgave and confessed his sin; let’s reach him before
he dies; he is a knowledgeable person; don’t let him depart without faith.” But
before the noble one could come, [Evliyâ Şücâʿ] died. The noble one still prayed
the departed’s funeral prayer and was present for his burial. Bilâl Halife heard
about these situations, and became the devoted follower of the shaykh.69
Fuʾâdî concluded his narrative by remarking that, “the great hope is that the
knowledgeable one [Evliyâ Şücâʿ], by [means of] the breath of the noble one

and his prayers, has gone to the afterlife with faith.” Nevertheless, the palpable
uncertainty surrounding the ultimate fate of Evliyâ Şücâʿ was not lost on Fuʾâdî’s
audience; he died before he could obtain Şaʿbân’s formal act of forgiveness.
More importantly, Fuʾâdî also used the narrative as a didactic strategy,
instructing his audience on to how to deal with the growing criticism of their
order and its practices in the public arena. The best strategy, as Şaʿbân Efendi
advised the more self-righteous of his dervishes, was not to lash out at their
critics or engage in schadenfreude, but to forgive and attempt reconciliation
with them whenever possible. Did this support the argument that the Halveti
occupied a weak position in Ottoman society, in that its members dared not stick
up for themselves against hostile but respected elite scholars like Evliyâ Şücâʿ?
Perhaps, but the more likely explanation is that Şaʿbân’s tactics, if emulated by
his followers, would allow the dervishes to maintain an honorable high ground
that was an asset in their conflicts with anti-Sufi factions. Furthermore, vengeful
competitiveness was a vice that their teachings demanded they avoid if they were
to achieve true mystical advancement.70
In fact, Fuʾâdî informed his audience that this latter interpretation was sanc-
tioned by the founding figure of the Halveti path himself, in the form of the
caliph ʿAlî b. Abû Tâlib who stated that “whoever does not have the practice of
God, the practice of His messenger, and the practice of His saints has nothing.”
When the caliph ʿAlî was asked for clarification about the first of the three ele-
ments in this statement, he replied, “concealment of the secret and the shameful
(kitmân al-sirr waʾl-ʿayb).” Fuʾâdî translated the meaning of this Arabic apho-
rism for his audience as, “that person must be a concealer of secrets, be it his
own secret or that of another, and must be someone who covers up shame, be
it his own shame or that of another.” In other words, God forbids using others’
wrongdoing as an excuse to attack them – a policy that took direct aim at the
tactics of those who censured Sufis in the public arena. Moreover, when ʿAlî was
asked about the second element regarding the practice of the Prophet, he replied
“dissimulation (al-mudârât).” Fuʾâdî again translates and interprets the Arabic
meaning of ʿAlî’s response to indicate to his audience that:
[Dissimulation] is not to inflict pain and suffering on the people who fight [with
you] and confront you in anger; it is to abandon conflict and confrontation [in
favor of] patience and forbearance. Because if a person does not show patience
and forbearance with his enemy, and intends to take his revenge by conflict and
confrontation, it increases the enmity of the enemy and the rancor of the mali-
cious. The tranquility of the heart departs, and pain and suffering increase. The
upstanding dervish is not he who abandons fighting and confrontation, but rather
[he who] does good to his enemy in response to his maliciousness!

Fu’âdî thus turns the practice of the Prophet to Halveti advantage by seizing the
moral high ground from their enemies, not only by refusing to rise to the tempta-
tion of avenging slights aimed at one’s own person and honor, but even by doing
good to one’s enemy in response. We must take into account the difficulty of
this path, given how strongly embedded the culture of honor was in pre-modern
Ottoman society.71 However, this did fit well with the Halveti teachings on con-
trolling one’s own carnal desires, of which the desire for petty revenge would be
considered an element.
Fuʾâdî then concludes the triad of basic virtues by discussing ʿAlî’s response
to the question about the practice of the saints of God, to which he replied, “the
bearing of suffering (ihtimâl al-adhî).” Fuʾâdî did not elaborate on this aspect
of the caliph’s words, saying only that “it is to be patient and endure the cruelty
of the people,” and that a full exposition would require another whole tract. He
concluded by holding up Şaʿbân as the best embodiment of these three prin-
ciples, pointing out that they are what saved him and his followers from his
detractors, and warning that contemporary dervishes would be wise to follow his
example.72
Şaʿbân had to be on guard against the constant threat of harassment, and not
just from censurers. Another Fuʾâdî informant, Ahmed Sâʿatçi Efendi, recalled
that when he was younger, he had been a student of theology (danişmend)73 in
İstanbul. While paying a visit to his home town of Kastamonu, he heard about
Şaʿbân’s powers of discernment and his knowledge of the inner state of others,
so he and a friend went to the shaykh to see if the rumors were true. Şaʿbân ulti-
mately obliged them with a demonstration his spiritual powers, but expressed his
disapproval of their curiosity:
As soon as we kissed [his] hand and sat, without even asking about our state and
thoughts, he said, “it is not a good thing to test the shaykhs. Because those who
want to request exoteric and esoteric help from the people of God and be satis-
fied on every specific point may not achieve this desire. It is necessary to beware
and fear [this tactic] as much as unbelief.” The water was dumped on our heads
[along] with the glass, and we immediately sank into the valley of shame and
embarrassment. When we made our apologies and kissed the blessed hand again,
he asked about our thoughts with a complete level of kindness and concern, and
dispelled our embarrassment with wise words, saying, “it wasn’t [out of] vanity
[that I did that].”74
The narrator’s career in the scholarly hierarchy clearly imbued him with a dis-
trust of Sufi leaders with whom he was not immediately familiar. Testing shaykhs
was a common practice aimed at discrediting or embarrassing personalities who

lacked proper credentials, and Şaʿbân firmly censured the insult, even though he
treated the offenders fairly leniently. Yet Şaʿbân’s remarks were controversial,
in that he likened testing a shaykh to unbelief. Could the two even approach the
same level of sinfulness? Even Fuʾâdî was troubled, and proceeded to offer his
customary clarification:
The meaning of the noble one’s saying to Sâʿatçi Efendi, “it is necessary to fear
and beware as much as unbelief” is attributed to warning and cautioning . . . But
his meaning is not “şeriʿat unbelief.” The places of consideration on the stages of
the path are many, and one of them is the four states [of] şeriʿat, tarikat, maʿrifet,
and hakikat.75 Every stage among the people of God has [a position of] both faith
and unbelief. It is known to the people. If there were to be a possibility of being
an unbeliever by testing the shaykhs, it is not being an unbeliever by means of
şeriʿat unbelief. But it is being an unbeliever through “tarikat unbelief.” Because
it means that if the shaykhs are found in a state of unity and solidarity, being
friends with God, and not in the state of separateness and lacking unity [with
God]. Then, when they are not able to connect with you, and when they don’t
reflect the form you want to see in their mirror, you’ll fall into censure, you’ll
cover up the truth, thinking, “he’s not the perfected shaykh I wanted,” and you’ll
remain blocked off from their secret, their perfection and their state, and
you’ll remain a censurer and unsatisfied.76
By reclassifying the nature of unbelief to limit it to transgressions committed on

the Sufi path, Fuʾâdî was able to recontextualize the remarks of his protagonist
into a less controversial form, limiting Ahmed Efendi’s transgression to a mere
failure to uphold the rules and etiquette of the order. Still, the overall point the
audience would take from these passages was that making inquisitions to test the
powers of a shaykh could have disastrous results, as the seeker could commit
a terrible sin by falsely censuring a shaykh who did not behave in the way that
the seeker expected or preferred. These anecdotes served to bolster wavering
members of the order, under pressure by hostile outsiders to watch for signs that
Sufi leaders like Şaʿbân could be charlatans. The lesson was that a lack of trust
in the ability of one’s shaykh resulted in a failure to achieve progress on the Sufi
path.
One interesting aspect of Fuʾâdî’s account is its implication that the Şaʿbâniye
engaged in a tactical alliance with the dervishes of the Mevlevî order active in
Kastamonu and its environs. Unlike the hagiography of İbrâhîm-i Gülşenî, the
Menâkıb stops short of trying to establish formal historical links between
the Halveti shaykh Şaʿbân-ı Veli and Mevlânâ Celâluddîn Rûmî.77 However, the
work does extend special recognition to the Mevlevî order as an equal partner

among the groups contending for religious influence in the region. A noteworthy
example of this is Şaʿbân’s refusal to allow one of his successors to appoint a
new successor, Hasan Dede:
One of the successors of Şaʿbân Efendi was about to confer a cap (kisve) and
place it on the head of a dervish of exalted power by the name of Hasan Dede in
his own lodge in the area of Tokat, when a call came from a unseen person, “don’t
put it on!” He stopped to reflect, thinking, “is this call divine, or is it satanic?”
and in his mystical contemplation he recognized that it was divine . . . so after
abandoning the giving of headgear, he went to Kastamonu to visit [Şaʿbân] with
that dervish. When they met in the cells, as soon as he gave word of this state, the
sultan said: “I was the desperate one who made that call. Praise be to God that
you had an ear, and you heard it.” When he was asked, “so why did you forbid
it?” he replied, “this dervish will be one of the perfected people among the der-
vishes of Molla Hünkâr [Rûmî], and he will be assigned their headgear. I forbid
[the wearing of the Halveti headgear], so that he need not remove it afterwards.”
In fact, it occurred like that by the command of God, and it is renowned that the
dervish Hasan became a perfected Mevlevî, and a scholar of the Mesnevî . . .78
The friendly tone of the anecdote indicates that this event was not perceived as a
threat in the same way as that posed by the renegades who challenged Şaʿbân’s
instructions. Fuʾâdî also referenced other elements of Mevlevî–Halveti coopera-
tion by including the story of an abortive attempt at the pilgrimage to Mecca by
another Mevlevî contemporary, Mehmed Urgâncîzâde. A local Mevlevî notable
who clearly had friendly relations with the Şaʿbâniye, he told Fuʾâdî how he had
come to recognize Şaʿbân’s presence in his home region:
When we reached the province (vilâyet) of Reşîd [to the east of Kastamonu], in
that city we ran into an ecstatic mystic famed in those parts for unveiling [the
unseen]. My companion, in order to take the breath of that ecstatic by way of
an augury, said: “Poor one, I am going on the noble pilgrimage. I wonder, will
my pilgrimage be blessed, and will I be guided to the pilgrimage this year?”
He replied with the manifestation of his favor, “go to it; let it be blessed.”
Afterwards, when [my companion] requested an augury also for [me] and said,
“what do you say about this dervish?” he looked at my face and said, “for this
one, Şaʿbân Efendi’s favor is sufficient.” When it was asked, “which Şaʿbân
Efendi’s [favor]” he said, “the Şaʿbân Efendi who is buried in his own land of
Kastamonu!” By the command of God most high, this poor one [Mehmed] fell
ill, and was not guided to the pilgrimage [in] this year. I came back to Kastamonu
[instead].

Fuʾâdî concluded Mehmed’s anecdote with praise for him:
He was never absent from contemplation and remembrance, and zeal and expe-
riencing [God] in order to perfect [his] state in the circle of the zikr and other
places of purity in the lodge of Şaʿbân Efendi, thinking, “my pilgrimage was [to]
this place.”79
Modern interpretations of Sufi orders might find it odd that a Mevlevî dervish
would participate so actively in the rites of another order; however, the two Sufi
orders seemed to be closely linked in Kastamonu. Abdülbâki Gölpınarlı noted
that parts of the performance of the Şaʿbâniye zikr in Kastamonu show the
influence of Mevlevî practices.80 Moreover, we see a general movement within
some branches of the Halveti order toward a closer relationship with the legacy
of Rûmî, as exemplified by the Gülşenî branch of the order in Egypt. There
may have been practical considerations involved, as members of the two orders
joined forces to defend their ritual practices, both of which involved music and
ritual movements, against censurers. We know that Kastamonu was the site of a
major Mevlevî lodge ranked sixth in importance behind those of Konya, Bursa,
Eskişehir, Gelibolu, and Aleppo. Unfortunately, we lack information at present
on the activities of the Mevlevî order in Kastamonu, reflecting the weak state
of research in this field to date and underscoring the importance of Fu’âdî’s
account.81 Oddly, we have seen that other anecdotes express feelings of tension
toward other Sufis, even other sub-branches of the Halveti order such as reflected
in the tale of Mahmûd Efendi of the Sünbüliye. These accounts suggest that the
Şaʿbâniye had a strong independent streak that led them to stake out a distinct
positions in relation to the other religious groups of their era.82
.
The foundation of the Şaʿbâniye lodge, and the
.
establishment of a Halveti sub-branch in Kastamonu
Up to now, we have seen how Şaʿbân-ı Veli came to situate himself within his
contemporary religious and social networks. Though his hagiographer, ʿÖmer
el-Fuʾâdî, is not a neutral voice in recounting those events, and tells us as much
about how they were to be received by a later audience as they do about Şaʿbân
himself, we can still discern amid the narrative structures the long decades of
work required for Şaʿbân to build the foundations of his sub-branch of the Halveti
order. That process would not reach consolidation until the last years of the
shaykh’s life.
It is not clear when Şaʿbân decided to leave his preaching position to
withdraw to a more secluded life. The narratives suggest that old age and

disillusionment with his public presence played a role, perhaps intertwined with
pressure from anti-Sufi forces and struggles with wayward followers. Still, a key
incident served as the catalyst to introduce the final phase of Şaʿbân’s life. Some
time in the mid-tenth/sixteenth century, a disastrous fire wiped out much of the
town of Kastamonu, and Şaʿbân, after years of building his following, read into
that event a divine message recalling him to the original task with which he had
felt he was divinely charged:
In the Atâbey Gazi quarter a fire broke out by the command of God. The wind
lifted a piece of wood from one of the burning houses, and burned the city
from one end to another up to the Honsâlâr mosque.83 Its pulpit and roof being
[made of] wood, it caught fire more easily on a summer day, and it couldn’t be
stopped. When half the city, along with the blessed cells of the mosque, were
burnt, [Şaʿbân’s] pleasure was secreted in sorrow, and saying, “the command
and judgment belongs to God,” he said to his faithful lovers who wanted to
rebuild the cells, by [means of] allusion and a sign, “let them not be rebuilt; there
is a command of God in the fire. Let a home be bought for me in the area of the
Seyyid Sünnetî mosque in Hisârardı. Because I am that guardian of the secret of
Seyyid Sünnetî . . . The will of God is that we go to that place.” In short, they
could not dispute his words, and the houses were bought through the action of
Eyüb Halife, father of Samed Halife, which are now the lodge of the recourse of
the worlds and the tomb full of light, and as soon as he went to the other world,
he died [in the Sünnetî mosque].84
The description of this tragic event in Kastamonu’s history suggests that changes
had taken place since Şaʿbân’s arrival. During the reign of Sultan Süleyman, the
town itself had expanded, both in population and area; the old Seyyid Sünnetî
mosque no longer lay outside its borders.85 In addition, Şaʿbân had acquired fol-
lowers with the financial means to purchase property in the area of the mosque to
relocate the head of the evolving sub-branch of the order.86 The fire undoubtedly
changed the dynamics of settlement and population in the city, as newly home-
less citizens were forced to relocate, at least temporarily, to parts of the city that
had avoided destruction. All this allowed Şaʿbân to establish a space for his fol-
lowing, as opposed to the now damaged Honsâlâr mosque which he had shared
with others up to that point. The stage was set for the final establishment of the
focal point around which the future followers of the Şaʿbâniye branch of the
Halveti order would congregate after his death.
While Şaʿbân had made significant progress in Kastamonu through his years
of struggle in establishing a sub-branch of the order, the order’s future was not
necessarily assured. While the years leading up to Şaʿbân’s death continued to

contribute to the strength of his legacy, what is striking is the modest nature of
his activities at the end of his life. Fuʾâdî does not shy away from relating the
miraculous acts of grace that his protagonist manifested during the final years
of his life. However, he does carefully regulate their presentation. Most lack
the grandiosity of earlier hagiographical forms, and many of them reflect the
modest walks of life represented in Kastamonu during the latter half of the tenth/
sixteenth century.
Şaʿbân and Fuʾâdî both shared an aversion to playing up the miraculous
aspects of sainthood as being a distraction from the real issues on which
believers should focus their attention. In the most spectacular manifestation of
divine grace that Fuʾâdî recorded, he used the anecdote not just to demonstrate
Şaʿbân’s powers, but to voice concerns about the danger inherent in them:
One day a young merchant came with sheep and linen cloth, and wanted to meet
[with Şaʿbân]. When the youth was asked about his circumstances, he said,
“when [I was] traveling by sea, by command of God a storm blew up. While
making vows to God, I also requested help from the noble one, and said, ‘my true
one, Şaʿbân Dede, if you are a real saint, with the aid of God reach out to us!’
With the power of God most High, a hand appeared, gave a smack to our boat,
and turned it to one side, and from the front it grabbed the side and straightened
that boat out like an arrow, and when we arrived at the place which was desired,
the hand disappeared. This is the reason for our being saved from calamity. And
many people on the boat saw this and vowed an offering.” When he revealed the
secret which had appeared from the power of the Pole [of the Age], the dervishes
who were present took him outside in confidence and said, “young man, don’t
ever say this again; there’s no acceptance for it.” Then the dervish doorkeeper
had him meet the noble one in the inner cells, and as soon as he kissed his hand,
he warned him with a blessed prayer, saying, “[young] lamb, why are you reveal-
ing our secret? Haven’t you heard the saying, ‘did you see the camel, I didn’t
even see the camel foal?’” 87 After that, no one ever received a response from his
mouth about this again.88
Given the tone in which the young merchant beseeched Şaʿbân Efendi, we
might wonder why he wasn’t also criticized for lacking the proper amount
of faith, or “testing his saint” in the same way as Ahmed Sâʿatçi Efendi
had. However, the focus of Şaʿbân’s complaint rested on the youth’s public
proclamations of miraculous assistance. This was not a novel complaint for
a notable Sufi leader to make, but by the second half of the tenth/sixteenth
century, it was an increasingly critical point. Given the existence and potential
prominence of anti-Sufi and anti-Halveti forces in the region, Halveti leaders

like Şaʿbân had to walk a fine line on the issue of miraculous powers. Rather
than display them openly like Sufi leaders in earlier times, they demanded
confidentiality.89
This guaranteed that a certain tension would exist between hagiographer
and subject, as Fuʾâdî knew that he could not produce an effective hagiog-
raphy without highlighting at least some of the acts of grace that Şaʿbân had
manifested. Nevertheless, he treated this episode with a considerable amount of
caution, and appends his own commentary about the encounter:
If [seekers] know that he is a real saint and that his acts of grace are true, they
know that it will be lost if they reveal it. Because of this, they are wary of reveal-
ing secrets. But as soon as there is a liar and deceiver who has no source for his
act of grace, he wants to sell acts of grace and spread the secret in every place for
the acquisition of money and the other aims of the corrupt. May the secret of the
true saints be pure!90
This remark reveals another challenge that had begun to face members of the
Halveti order in their day to day activities. The censuring of anti-Halveti fac-
tions was troublesome enough, but the flip side of the coin was that fraudulent
or doctrinally questionable claimants to mystical leadership were even worse.
They corrupted the edifice on which Islamic sainthood had been constructed
by misappropriating the qualities of saints and misrepresenting the point of
sainthood.
Fuʾâdî clarified this threat further by relating an anecdote about ʿOsmân
Efendi, Şaʿbân Efendi’s eventual successor to the order’s leadership. After
Şaʿbân had sent him to Tokat to spread the order’s teachings there, ʿOsmân
returned one day for a visit, so he approached the door of Şaʿbân’s cell. But then
he stopped short, turned around, and left. Some bystanders saw that he didn’t
enter, and asked him why he didn’t knock. He told them, “the jinn have come to
the master; they are discussing a dream-vision and talking about other intellec-
tual issues. I was too polite to enter.” Fuʾâdî then added the following:
Some of the 360 successors of [Şaʿbân], when their perfection occurred by

being given power over the jinn by God according to their natural disposition, he
made the successorship prayer for them to be given spiritual dispensation over
the [other] jinn. But all [of them] are able to control and subjugate the jinn with
the power of the names of God, acts of grace, and sainthood, and not by doing
fortune-telling, soothsaying, and other things like this. They used to block the
mischief and bad deeds of the jinn that occurred to the race of men . . . But those
among the other shaykhs, who do not act with the power of esoteric knowledge

and the specific points of the names of God, or with the specific points of the
Qurʾan, if they engage in fortune-telling and soothsaying, or draw lots, or gather
the jinn [through a seance] (cin derüp), or look into water, or make jinn speak,
or place a vefk-charm without perfecting [it], or are not among the people [who
know] vefk,91 or [if they] act through astrology or sand oracles, they are corrupt,
rotten, and trouble-making liars! Let their statements never be believed and their
actions never followed. Perfection will not be granted to those manifesting this
state in any dervish or successors acting like this; they are among those who lack
maturity or are incomplete [in their training].92
Fuʾâdî thus indirectly reveals that forms of “pseudo-Sufism” and magical prac-
tices competed with the cult of saints among the general population. He needed
to deny the legitimacy of this competitor vis-à-vis more religiously sanctioned
ways of dealing with the serious concerns of everyday life among the popula-
tion. In narratives like these, we realize that Fuʾâdî needs to invoke Şaʿbân’s
acts of grace to retain a following; otherwise, some followers might resort to
those who promised them more immediate and doctrinally suspect solutions for
their problems. Fuʾâdî also implied that some of the renegades from Şaʿbân’s
order chose to take up such practices as a way of boosting their own standing,
or as a short cut to fame and increased prosperity in preference to the ideals
embodied by the order. In the Menâkıb, we see an author who has to walk a
tightrope between questionable forms of popular practice and folk magic, and
an ever watchful scholarly class that looked to seize on any evidence of ques-
tionable doctrine as a way of banishing the order from the religious life of the
community.
Given his awareness of this tension, Fuʾâdî offers corroborating accounts of
the “invisible hand” of Şaʿbân Efendi as a standard miraculous occurrence in
other contexts. He related another account from one of his neighbors, a pious
woman by the name of Şehrî Hoca and the wife of Fuʾâdî’s contemporary and
fellow dervish, İbrâhîm Dede. One day, noting that Şaʿbân had somehow injured
his hand,
[she] prepared a salve, saying, “a wound appeared on the inside of the hand of
Şaʿbân Efendi.” As soon as it was asked, “what kind of wound?” she said, “God
knows.” After a time a person came, like the aforementioned youth, and revealed
the secret. While [he was] traveling by sea, an unbelievers’ boat came, and while
fighting [with the crew of his craft], he requested an act of grace from the shaykh
in return for a vow to God. As soon as he said, “my true one Şaʿbân Dede, reach
out to us with the help of God,” a hand appeared opposite him, and the shot from
the [unbelievers’] cannon hit that hand with a puff of smoke. He said, “I knew

that hand was the blessed hand of Şaʿbân Dede, and by the command of God, he
blocked the shot of the cannon from this poor one.”
Linking this variation to the first narrative involving the youth, the historian wit-
nesses the spread of a trope across the community, taking on embellished forms
and alternative characterizations as it passed from person to person through oral
transmission. Fuʾâdî cheerfully exploited the multiple manifestations of Şaʿbân’s
supernatural protection of those who called on him for extraordinary aid. He
even added a third narrative in which a builder from the quarter in which Şaʿbân
lived, Muhyiddîn Esendîloğlu, overheard a man who came to thank Şaʿbân for
helping him:
He said, “my lord, may God most high be pleased with you. I was lifting a mill-
stone with my companion in the quarry at İlgaz mountain, and while [I was] stand-
ing it up on its side and crafting it into a millstone, it toppled over and went into
a stream bed from which it could not be lifted out. When it happened, I requested
help from God most high and help and succor from you, saying, ‘My true one,
Şaʿbân Dede, if you’re a real saint, grab it!’ By the command of God, a hand
appeared and with a slap the stone was lying on its side. I knew right away that
hand was yours. You were kind and appeared [to resolve] our trouble.” The noble
one was completely embarrassed and said, “hey man, what are you saying? What
word have I of this? Power and the hand of ability are God’s. This state that you
speak of is not ours,” and he rejected [the man’s] words vehemently in order to
preserve his state and secret. He sent him away from the gathering and when [the
man] went out, this poor one [Muhyiddîn] said to him, “hey stupid man, haven’t
you seen anything at all [in life]? Is this type of thing said to these people?”93
Like the other stock characters, the hapless quarryman was called back later
for a private audience, granted forgiveness, and told to keep quiet in the future.
Nevertheless, all the anecdotes revolve around the elements of Şaʿbân’s inter-
cession, followed by a public disavowal of responsibility for the miraculous
solution to the various problems, ultimately concluding in a quiet resolution that
allowed for the private admission of the act of grace.
This most spectacular and supernaturally-based act of grace with which
Şaʿbân had become associated had to be handled with considerable care; thus,
Fuʾâdî’s compilation of multiple corroborating narratives. Other acts of grace
that Şaʿbân performed were much more down to earth. One anecdote that Fuʾâdî
himself recalled from his own childhood coupled nicely with the account of
Sehrî Hoca to give us useful insights into how Şaʿbân’s female followers related
to the shaykh:

My now deceased mother’s sister was sick, and her head hurt greatly. For a long
time, prayers were [both] read [aloud] and written out, and doctors also tried to
remedy it, but a cure was never found. One day my mother consulted with my
father, and they came to the lord [Şaʿbân] with pure belief, saying, “whenever
the Pole of Poles, whose prayers are accepted, Şaʿbân Efendi, does not pray, it
won’t get better.” They met in his cell, with eight women among the supplicants,
and several of the women requested only a prayer without explaining or disclos-
ing their wishes, and [Şaʿbân] recited only the Fatiha.94 When it came the turn
of my now deceased mother, the noble one didn’t just recite the Fatiha; he also
lifted up his headgear with his right hand and rubbed his blessed forehead once
with his blessed hand. He recited the Fatiha [together] with this sign. Before
my now deceased mother could return to the house, her sister’s headache had
completely gone, and it was confirmed and known that she was completely
cured.95
The ability to cure sickness and avert chronic illness was a classic sign of saint-
hood among the Halveti to which Fuʾâdî could bear personal witness. Yet one
cannot help but note the absence of male figures at this gathering, with the pos-
sible exception of Fuʾâdî’s father and a young Fuʾâdî.96 It may be that while the
well-to-do men in these households were away on business or traveling, their
wives relied on Sufi leaders like Şaʿbân as a means of protection for both their
husbands and themselves. Unfortunately, the anecdote is insufficiently detailed
to allow us more than speculation on these issues. Still, despite heavy imbalances
in the narrator’s gender breakdown in favor of males, narratives like these do
indicate that at least part of his base of support consisted of women. It is perhaps
not surprising that as the events in the narrative begin to draw closer to the period
of Fuʾâdî’s own childhood, he drew on women’s narratives to establish Şaʿbân’s
legacy, not least through his own female relatives.
This is not to say that poorer members of the community did not recognize
the value of Şaʿbân’s growing following in their community in seeking help for
their own troubles. While our herdsman from an earlier time in Şaʿbân’s career
may have found him a bit strange or off-putting, subsequent characters looked to
him for salvation from various personal crises which afflicted them. Fuʾâdî chose
a remarkably insightful anecdote that indicates how saintly power could work for
his audience, and related:
It is related that one day a trustworthy and impoverished farm laborer, without
compare in pure belief among the upstanding lovers of the noble one, came into
the noble presence. He said: “My lord, I had a donkey. By God’s command it died.
I am a man with a wife and children. I have to come on foot, and I am without

remedy. Please pray a blessed prayer for me, that God does not force me to ask
help from despicable people, and He will grant livestock (davâr) with your prayer
and kindness, and let Him save [us] from hopelessness.” Knowing about his pure
belief, [Şaʿbân] raised his hand and prayed, and said, “be patient, brother, let God
give.” The following day a sipahi97 brought a yellow mule as an offering. After the
shaykh prayed for its acceptance [by God as an offering], he said, “let the person
whose donkey died and who requested a prayer come.” When that poor person
came, he submitted the mule to the poor one and said by means of advice and
admonishment, “take now, poor one; God most high gave a mule in place of the
donkey from the treasury of the unseen on account of your belief in charity, and
your pure belief in the kindness and breath of the saints and good men. By seeking
help from this station, you found this once again at the door of God. You won’t be
forced to seek help from undesirables. Be grateful for the blessing, and be a true
servant to God most high.” That sipahi, who was present there, was astonished,
and exclaimed, “glory be to God!” When asked about his astonishment, he said,
“my mule was born in a group of animals; I vowed one to the noble one as the share
[belonging to] God, but I didn’t hurry in bringing it. I was going to see to some of
my affairs in the city tomorrow and bring it then, but a greater urgency overcame
my heart and I brought it today. It had an ultimate cause!”98
In this case, Şaʿbân played the role of intermediary between the overseer of a
military landholding and a poor farmer in danger of losing his livelihood, redi-
recting the charity offered by the wealthier members of society to those in need.
While the wealthier and more powerful members of society sometimes provided
for those less fortunate out of personal piety, they probably did not have the time
or inclination to seek out all individual problems. Moreover, rules of social eti-
quette probably limited the amount of meaningful interaction people could have
with those who were not of their own rank in the social hierarchy, especially if
they lacked connections to a wider patronage network. Şaʿbân, having devoted
his life to the ideal of charitable giving and the practice of not valuing material
goods, could act as a pre-modern charity for the public, rewarding those who
followed the basic principles of the order as a lender of last resort. While Fuʾâdî
liked to claim that his mentor was so generous that he was “never able to rub two
akçe coins together,” these narratives suggest that tithes came into the order in
equal measure to expenditures.99
Poor farmers were not the only ones who could benefit from the order’s
largesse. Another contemporary of Fuʾâdî’s, a maker of bellows for the metal
forges in Kastamonu named Körükçü Kelle Mustafa, used to recite the same
story over and over in any gathering in which the subject of debt and owing
money came up:

I owed a debt of 1,200 akçe [silver coins] to someone. When it was too stressful
and difficult, I sought money [given] as a good deed with a thousand thanks from
my wealthy friends, and sought [a loan] with interest from others.100 When it was
not possible to get [money] from anyone, in the end I turned to God, and as soon
as I said, “O Lord of the Worlds, if there is a cure for me it is surely from you;
out of reverence for your prophets and saints, your help is necessary for me,”
the Pole of the World, Şaʿbân Efendi, came into my mind by God’s inspiration.
Thus, I came to his noble presence to take his prayer, and when I announced
my situation, he lifted up the carpet he was sitting on and said, “there’s a little
money there; take it.” I stretched out a hand and took it. But I was embarrassed
to take all of it. Knowing that I did not take it all, [despite] the darkness of the
cell, he said, “take it all. God most high sent it for you; it’s all yours.” The poor
one [Mustafa] took all of it and put it into a kerchief. He raised up his hand and
prayed. Afterwards I counted it, and it was the exact same amount of akçe as my
debt. Praise be to God I was saved from debt! I have never had debt since with
his auspicious prayer and blessings!101
Both anecdotes underscore the beginning of a critical transition point in Ottoman

history. A growing struggle with increasing inflation marked the close of Sultan
Süleyman’s reign, and Halveti notables like Şaʿbân could gain a certain degree
of goodwill by acting as an emergency lender for otherwise productive citizens
who had fallen into arrears. In return, they received the support of followers like
Mustafa, who voluntarily acted as free publicity proclaiming their good deeds
and renown. Of course, if one had asked Şaʿbân about the reasoning behind
his giving, he would merely have explained that this was an integral part of
the Halveti path and that he sought no earthly reward. Nevertheless, whatever
Şaʿbân’s own rationale, these types of acts clearly did bring worldly benefits
in the form of support, popular acclaim, and defenders of the Halveti order’s
leaders and devotees. Or as Fuʾâdî put it in a poetic couplet cited in his descrip-
tion of Şaʿbân’s extraordinary generosity: “If the shaykh is enamored of money,
the hope of the disciple is that salary * The king of the dinar is not always the
king of insight (dîdâr).”102
This was not the only form of networking in which Şaʿbâniye leaders could
engage. Their principles of hospitality in housing travelers, as exemplified in
the events that marked Şaʿbân’s own initiation into the Halveti path, made them
excellent sources of knowledge about the wider world. Fuʾâdî noted a number
of anecdotes in which various Kastamonu denizens traveled abroad either on the
pilgrimage to Mecca or to other parts of Anatolia, and encountered people who
asked them about Şaʿbân. Even after his death, his followers could exploit these
connections in faraway places. A trio of Kastamonu pilgrims, one of whom was

Şaʿbân’s successor, traveled to Egypt many years after his death on pilgrimage.
When they stopped to visit one of the tombs of the local saints in Cairo, they
were suddenly accosted by a mystic they encountered there:
Within the noble tomb we saw a person from the evlâd-i ʿArab103 who was
wearing white clothes and was in the world of mystical contemplation. As soon
as all of us came in the door of the tomb, he lifted up his head and saw us, and
shouted once with longing. He came before us eagerly, saying, “noble ones
who come from the true saint Şaʿbân Efendi in Rûm, come hither!” When he
asked, “has any one among you seen the blessed beauty of that lord?,” Hâfız
ʿAlî Efendi, having seen [Şaʿbân] in the time of his youth, informed him of his
characteristics. He kissed [ʿAlî’s] eyes with sincerity, and honored and ennobled
all of us greatly.104
Another informant and successor to Benli Sultan told Fuʾâdî about another
occurrence in the distant past, when an unnamed shaykh in Khorasan (a region of
north-eastern Iran) had a vision of Şaʿbân Efendi in Anatolia while in an ecstatic
state. He sent two of his dervishes to Kastamonu to investigate, telling them, “go
and visit and gaze into the mirror of beauty, and see what form appears [there].”
When they arrived in Kastamonu and requested a meeting with Şaʿbân Efendi, he
never emerged. He merely handed a mirror to one of his own dervishes and com-
manded him to give it the two visitors, and said that they would understand. The
two dervishes departed as quickly as they had come, immediately recognizing the
allusion to their master’s words. Fuʾâdî concluded by again denouncing the cen-
surers of Şaʿbân Efendi and the Halveti, for while knowledgeable mystics were
able to understand the signs of sainthood in a glance, these signs were obscured
for detractors due to their own vanity and delusions of grandeur.105 The narrative
itself is full of tropes, as the Khorasanî mystics, hidden away in a distant realm
at the farthest reaches of the Safavid polity, were often introduced as justification
for purported far-flung worldly travels of Ottoman Sufi shaykhs.106 In addition,
the use of a mirror as a symbol of the acquisition of mystical and philosophical
knowledge is widespread in Islamic literature. Whatever the historical veracity,
however, Fuʾâdî used these anecdotes to introduce the thinking of Ibn al-ʿArabî
about the hierarchy of saints that make up the hidden sub-structure of both the
seen and unseen worlds. The follower (or potential follower) of the Halveti
shaykhs could take advantage of this far-flung network of God’s friends:
The pillars (evtâd) which are among the men of the unseen (ricâl-i gayb) are four
[in number]. They also call them “the four men,” and the budalâʾ, who are seven
[in number], and the nücebâʾ, who are 40 [in number], and the nukabâʾ, who are

three [in number].107 And all the rest of the men of God are turned toward and
followers of the support of the world, who is the Pole with the status of being
the greatest Pole. The aforementioned men of God also know the greatest Pole
of Poles who goes to heaven and the world of eternity. They seek help from their
holy spirits and their exalted secrets.108
All this grants modern readers insight on how provincial Halveti shaykhs might
explain the complex theology of Ibn al-ʿArabî’s cosmology and theories of saint-
hood in a context that their countrymen could understand.
The movement of the saints in the unseen world also raised the controversial
topic of tayy-i mekân, a way in which saintly figures could transcend time and
space to appear in faraway places, while appearing to still be present in their
homelands. The “unseen hand” of Şaʿbân Efendi was one form of this manifes-
tation, but Fuʾâdî had another problem to tackle: the generally known fact that
Şaʿbân Efendi never completed the ritual pilgrimage to the Holy Cities enjoined
upon all Muslims once in a lifetime. In discussing the final years of Şaʿbân’s
life, Fuʾâdî used a specific manifestation of sainthood in an anecdote that tackled
both problems at the same time. An unnamed person from one of the villages
near Kastamonu, having made the pilgrimage to Mecca, fell ill and was unable
to travel when it came time for his caravan to depart. Trapped and impoverished
in Mecca, he longed to return home, but there was nothing he could do. At last
a stranger took pity on him and told him to look for an old Halveti shaykh who
prayed the morning prayer with the Hanefî imâm every day, and to grab onto
the hem of his clothing before he could finish the prayer and refuse to let go, no
matter how hard the shaykh pressed him to relent. When the man went there,
he recognized Şaʿbân, grabbed onto him and implored him for his help. After a
great deal of resistance and embarrassment, Şaʿbân finally relented on the con-
dition that he tell no one of his secrets, and told him to close his eyes. When he
opened them, the hapless villager found himself standing before his home in his
own village.109 This narrative served a dual purpose. First, it confirmed Şaʿbân’s
ability to master the unseen world and use its powers to transcend time and place,
akin to the earlier Halveti figures documented in Hulvî’s work. The other element
is the implication that he had no trouble fulfilling his ritual obligations regarding
the Pilgrimage – during the final years of his life, while he seemed to be in seclu-
sion in his cell, he was in fact praying every day in the grand mosque in Mecca!
***
These narratives provide us with our core picture of the life and times of
Şaʿbân-ı Veli and his relationship to greater Kastamonu. More importantly,

however, they also reflect on how later devotees of the Şaʿbâniye branch of the
Halveti order received, and interacted with the memory of a prominent saintly
figure. The line between the historical Şaʿbân and the perception of him among
both his followers and his hagiographer becomes blurred in the hagiography.
This invariably complicates any critical assessment of how ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî’s
work can be used as a source for Ottoman provincial life and the mysticism of
Şaʿbân’s era.
Still, the narratives and their tensions do betray echoes of the foundational
history of the order’s founder. Şaʿbân emerges as the product of a provincial
Halveti and Sufi tradition that operated in remoter regions of the Empire, often
attracting travelers and passers-by on the roads between provincial centers. This
reflected the Şaʿbâniye’s origins in a generation of Sufi leaders seeking to dis-
tance themselves from the tensions evolving out of the Ottoman–Safavid conflict
that challenged the immediate descendants of Cemâl el-Halvetî, or a desire to
stay clear of urban centers where powerful detractors could target more vulner-
able figures in the order’s hierarchy. Şaʿbân’s career respresents a return to urban
centers from the remote locales of a Hayreddîn Tokâdî or Benli Sultan, but not
entirely. He still reflected the discomfort with a high public profile inherited
from his teachers, and avoided conflict with hostile figures wherever possible.
His positions on a mystic maintaining a public presence seemed distinctly out of
step with the later generation of mystical aspirants, increasingly concerned with
defending their order from detractors. In turn, this tension could lead to awkward
moments, reflected in ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî’s textual interjections to reconcile the
discrepancies between past and present. Moreover, a picture of Şaʿbân’s circle
of friends and followers also emerges from the accounts that offers, behind
the miraculous overlay, insights on how this sub-branch of the Halveti order
developed.
Şaʿbân’s extraordinary longevity as a presence in Kastamonu also contrib-
uted to his success, as his life in the city spanned at least four decades and he
outlived many of his contemporaries. But their leader’s life was not indefinite,
and like all Halveti groups, the followers of the Şaʿbâniye recognized the need
to confront a new stage in their history as their founding father’s health began
to deteriorate. Still, most of his followers were stunned when Şaʿbân-ı Veli died
suddenly on 18 Ziʾl-kaʿde 976/4 May 1569. His followers had to act to preserve
the order’s legacy, and it is to that part of the story that we must now turn.
Notes
1 This mosque lay just east of the Sünnetî mosque, and was built at some time in the first
half of the ninth/fifteenth century. It had come to be referred to as the Hüsâm Halife

mosque by Fuʾâdî’s time, but was demolished during the 1950s along with the tomb
of Cemâleddîn Ağa, the mosque’s namesake. The reference allows us to track exactly
where the settlement zone of Kastamonu came to an end in the early years of Sultan
Süleyman’s reign; see KKE, pp. 71–2 and 75.
2 MSV, pp. 42–3.
3 MSV, p. 46.
4 H. J. Kissling argued that this was Fuʾâdî’s brother, one of two who could be identified
by name; see Kissling, “Šaʿbânijje,” p. 100.
5 Both anecdote and Fuʾâdî’s commentary appear in MSV, p. 43.
6 MSV, p. 44.
7 MSV, pp. 44–6. Almost a decade after completing his hagiography, Fuʾâdî devoted a
section of his Türbenâme to Mahvî Efendi. We learn that he was one of Şaʿbân’s fol-
lowers who had achieved a perfected state and regularly recited poetry lauding both his
master and the mystical path. His poetry was apparently misunderstood and criticized by
some in Kastamonu, and Fuʾâdî chided them for failing to listen to his poems with the
ear of the heart, instead of just interpreting them literally; see MSV, pp. 138–40, where
Fuʾâdî invokes the same poetry a second time in a different context.
8 Benli Sultan’s complex and tomb still exist today in a remote mountain village south of
Kastamonu, and consists of a prayer room, a kitchen, and a room for guests. A separate
structure for Benli Sultan’s tomb was added later. Graffiti inscribed on the doorway to
the complex, and the remnants of a cemetery indicate that the complex remained active
into the thirteenth/nineteenth century.
9 MSV, p. 81.
10 MSV, p. 47.
11 MSV, p. 48. For more on the Honsâlâr mosque, built sometime in the first half of the
ninth/fifteenth century on the north-western part of Kastamonu, see KKE, p. 71.
12 Al-Qurʾân, 5:54; the full verse runs as follows: “O you who believe, whomever among
you rejects his religion, God will bring forward a people whom he loves and who loves
him, gentle with believers, harsh upon the unbelievers, striving in the way of God, and
they do not fear the blame of the slanderer. That is the favor of God, he bestows it on
whom he wills. God is infinite, all-knowing.”
13 MSV, pp. 49–50.
14 MSV, pp. 60–1.
15 MSV, p. 61.
16 In the development of the biographical elements about the Prophet Muhammad, most
stories that indicated a lack of self-confidence, or attempts to shirk the revelatory duty
that had been conferred upon him came to be marginalized in Muslim historical tradi-
tion; see URB, pp. 113–15. Şaʿbân’s lack of self-confidence might also have troubled
followers looking to legitimize him.
17 Sinâneddîn b. Yûsuf b. Yaʿkûb’s hagiography betrayed a deep tension between himself
and his father over the issue of participating in Ottoman public life. When Sultan
Süleymân’s retinue nominated Sinâneddîn’s father to offer a public prayer for rain
during a drought, he fled the scene, causing great scandal and embarrassment. Part of the
reason for Sinâneddîn’s writing the hagiography may have been to explain his father’s
actions; see THV, fols 36a–7b, and JC-GTH, p. 915.
18 MSV, pp. 61–2.
19 MSV, 104–5. Modern readers might dismiss Fuʾâdî as disorganized or repetitive in his

composition, given that he repeats these anecdotes verbatim later in the work. However,
this ignores that the hagiography was likely not received by its intended audience in a
single sitting from beginning to end, but was instead received as isolated vignettes as
it was read out to people visiting the tomb complex. Repetition indicated the degree to
which Fuʾâdî wanted certain ideas or concepts to be established in the minds of his audi-
ence in conjunction with narratives about Şaʿbân’s activities.
20 See, for example, the story of Shaykh Dâvûd, a successor of a successor of Cemâl el-
Halvetî, who supposedly made a remark misinterpreted by his followers as indicating
that he claimed to be the messianic figure known as the Mahdî. This led to his execu-
tion; see THV, fols 16b–17a. Mystics also encountered problems during the reign of
Süleymân if they were viewed as becoming too involved in internal politics, as hinted
at in an anecdote about the Halveti leader, Shaykh Gazanfer (d. 974/1567), told by his
follower, Seyyid Seyfullah. It took place in a setting where the two were imprisoned on
suspicion of taking the side of Sultan Süleymân’s son Bayezid during the succession
crisis at the end of the 1550s; see CAMA, fol. 10b. Doctrinally suspect viewpoints may
also have played a role in the imprisonment of the two; see RÖ-OT, p. 306.
21 For a good summary of the importance of preacher positions in İstanbul during the elev-
enth/seventeenth century, especially in the dynamics of the Halvetî–Kâdızâdeli conflict,
see MCZ-KZ, pp. 265–9; and MCZ-PP, pp. 129–81. The anecdotes indicate the growing
importance of preaching for Halveti Sufis in the years running up to the rise of Kâdızâde
Mehmed (d. 1044/1635).
22 A patched woolen cloak that marked an individual as being a fully sanctioned member
of the Halveti order, often granted by a shaykh to his disciple after the completion of
his mystical training. Alexander Knysh, Islamic Mysticism: A Short History (Leiden:
E. J. Brill, 1999), pp. 173 and 177, for more on the introduction and development of
these ritual symbols in order-based Sufism after the sixth/twelfth century. Şaʿbân’s
point was that if ʿAlî Dede had left any of his symbolic religious items behind, it would
indicate that he intended to return.
23 MSV, pp. 50–1.
24 The prayer rug of a Halveti leader, or seccâde, was symbolic of his presence and author-
ity within the lodge. The term was used as a synonym for the Arabic tarîqa (denoting
a Sufi order), implying that wherever the prayer rug lay, that was the seat of a leader’s
particular power base within a Sufi order; see Alexander Knysh, “Sadjdjâdah,” EI2, vol .
8, pp. 742–3.
25 MSV, p. 51.
26 MSV, pp. 51–2.
27 The disputes over the succession of Merkez Efendi to the leadership of the Sünbüliye
after Sünbül Efendi failed to give clear guidance on who was to succeed him were
recorded in both THV, fols 29a–30a and LH, fols 224b–5b (463–4). Both accounts indi-
cate how such situations could arise.
28 MSV, p. 74.
29 Fuʾâdî made a point of stressing the pivotal role ʿÖmer el-Halvetî played in founding a
new silsile that established the practice that would eventually give the order its name;
see MSV, pp. 30–1.
30 MSV, p. 51.
31 The term kutb, or “pole,” refers in its simplest form to refer to the highest ranking saint
in the hierarchy of saints active in any given temporal context. The most straightforward

discussion of the hierarchy of saints that came to be elaborated by al-Hakîm al-Tirmidhî
(d. 259/873) and Ibn al-ʿArabî (d. 637/1240), and the issues that it raised in mystical
theology can be found in MDI, pp. 199–203 and esp. p. 200, where the importance of
being able to recognize the pole is stressed by Mevlânâ Celâlüddîn Rûmî in an even
more blunt way than in Fuʾâdî’s exposition. The hierarchy in Ibn al-ʿArabî’s thought is
concisely summarized also in SOTS, pp. 89–98; one should also note pp. 99–100, n. 18,
where Chodkiewicz advances the contention that the tarikat-based Sufism of subsequent
generations “lacked precision” in applying Ibn al-ʿArabî’s theory. Implicit in this criti-
cism is the idea that later Sufi orders and their leaders interpreted his thinking in an over-
simplified way, and that Ibn al-ʿArabî himself would have taken a dim view of Fuʾâdî’s
claim; see also the remarks in SPK, pp. 369–75.
32 MSV, pp. 52–3.
33 MSV pp. 53–4.
34 The work of Cornell Fleischer on the life and career of Gelibolulu Mustafa ʿAlî (d.
1009/1601) does an outstanding job of situating his writings in the context of a transfor-
mation whereby the old established Ottoman elite families were being challenged and
displaced by new actors on the political scene. Later in his life, Mustafa ʿAlî became
especially concerned about proper behavior, qualifications for a given position, and
the importance of competence as the primary determinant for prominent positions in
society; see CF-MA, pp. 184–6 and 204–11 and the comments in MCZ-PP, pp. 102–5.
35 J. S. Trimingham argued that Sufi literature and handbooks produced during the sixth/
twelfth century constituted the key turning point in establishing this tenet; see JST,
p. 29.
36 MSV, pp. 54–5.
37 MSV, p. 55.
38 MSV, pp. 58–9. This anecdote was not without controversy, however, as other accounts
related that Şaʿbân himself communicated to someone in a dream that he approved only
300 successors, and the Prophet, or even God himself, took over the other sixty. Fuʾâdî
gets around these alternate assertions by arguing this was an equally legitimate interpre-
tation based on potential activity in the realm of the imaginary world (ʿâlem-i misâl).
Either way, the number 360 has symbolic value in the mystical canon; it corresponds
to popular theories about the number of figures present at the apex of the hierarchy of
saints; see MDI, p. 202.
39 See, for example, MSV, p. 62, where the work appends a list of followers like “Mehmed
Efendi known by the name Memdi Halife, and Mehmed Efendi known by the name
Kızılzade, and Hasan Çelebi whose pen name was Mahvî, and Sufi Muhyiddîn Efendi
who had previously been the müfti of Kastamonu, and ʿAbdî Efendi known both as
Molla Nâyî and İbrikçizade, perfected and skillful in all variety of sciences, and . . . a
gentleman with the surname Hacizade.” Of these, only Mahvî and his poetry were dis-
cussed in any detail.
40 Fuʾâdî recounts of Küreli Mehmed: “When someone asked the renowned Ottoman legal
scholar Ebûsuʿûd, ‘did it [ever] happen that a sort of embarrassment fell over him or that
his heart trembled when transmitting the noble commentary [on the Qurʾân] in so many
medreses and gatherings?’ he said, ‘one day many virtuous gentlemen from among the
jurists were present at one or two gatherings, and no place came into my heart for any
of them at all. But I saw Mehmed Çelebi from Nuhâs Küre, and at that time, it occurred
[that my heart] trembled a little bit. But it didn’t happen again,’” MSV, p. 63. The town

of Küre still exists today on the road from Kastamonu to İnebolu, but its importance as
a mining center declined during the years following the establishment of the Turkish
Republic; see KKE, p. 47.
41 MSV, pp. 63–4. Küreli Mehmed’s anecdote reflects a standard trope for the experience
of many Halveti notables that has them join the order after the spiritual power of a
Halveti guide solves their problems. Şaʿbân Efendi had a similar experience.
42 HSN, p. 426. However, the Ottoman biographer Taşköprüzâde (d. 968/1561), from
whom this information was drawn, offers us little beyond these observations; his aware-
ness of Benli Efendi derives solely through his personal meeting with Muharrem Efendi
in İstanbul’s scholarly circles.
43 The completion date has been established by an analysis of materials appearing within
the work; see remarks of Dr Abdülkadir Özcan in the introduction to HSN, pp. xi–xii.
44 Çivîzâde, also known as Molla Muhyiddîn Şeyh Mehmed b. İlyâs (d. 954/1547), held
the position of Grand Müfti of İstanbul from 945/1539 to 948/1542 after a distin-
guished career in the Ottoman capital and other places. Molla Fahruddîn İsrâfîlzâde (d.
943/1537) was another prominent scholar in the capital and sometime rival of Çivîzâde;
see HSN, pp. 446–8 and 475–6.
45 Saʿdî Çelebi, or Molla Saʿdullah b. ʿÎsâ b. Emîr Hân (d. 946/1539), served as the Grand
Müfti who preceded Çivîzâde, and acted as the successor to the great Ottoman intellec-
tual and writer Kemâlpaşazâde (d. 940/1534) in the position for five years; see HSN, pp.
443–5.
46 NVA, p. 355.
47 ʿUmar b. ʿAlî b. al-Fârid was an Egyptian saint whose mystical poetry often bordered on
the scandalous, but who was highly regarded in many Sufi and intellectual circles; see
Julian Baldick, Mystical Islam: An Introduction to Sufism (London: I. B. Tauris, 1989),
pp. 81–2.
48 A discussion of the controversial issues surrounding Çivîzâde that eventually led to his
dismissal can be found in RCR, pp. 250–2.
49 RCR, p. 246, and see also THV, fols 22b–4a.
50 For the confusing situation surrounding the struggle for the post, including İsrâfîlzâde’s
inquisition and writings, see RCR, p. 248 and HSN, p. 476.
51 Saʿdî Çelebi’s career as chief müfti was less eventful than those of his contemporaries;
see RCR, pp. 240–4. Repp’s views seem to be justified by the fairly uneventful biogra-
phy of Saʿdî that appears in HSN, pp. 443–5. However, others point out that Saʿdi Çelebi
was not necessarily pro-Sufi, and rejected Ibn al-ʿArabi’s teachings; see Tim Winter,
“Ibn Kemâl (d. 940/1534) on Ibn ʿArabî’s Hagiology,” ed. Ayman Shihadeh, Sufism and
Theology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), p. 145.
52 This would not be an unusual position for a learned Ottoman to take even in the more
turbulent period of the eleventh/seventeenth century, as Derin Terzioğlu noted in her
dissertation on Niyâzî-i Misrî (d. 1106/1694). In it, she problematized the idea of a
bipolar relationship between ʿulamâʾ and Sufis, and the debates over what constituted
“orthodox” Islam among Ottoman Muslims, see DTZ, pp. 190–276.
53 Devin DeWeese argued that Jâmî’s Nefahâtüʾl-Üns was intended to support the idea of
silsile-based Sufism rather than any particular order; see Devin DeWeese, “An “Uvaysî”
Sufi in Timurid Mawarannahr: Notes on Hagiography and the Taxonomy of Sanctity in
the Religious History of Central Asia (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Research
Institute for Inner Asian Studies, 1993), pp. 11–12. This view was seconded by Jürgen

Paul; see JP-DO, p. 14. See also the remarks of the editors of the most recent preparation
of Jâmî’s hagiographical work in its Turkish translation in LCH, pp. 30–1; they note that
his connections with the Nakşbendi order were rivaled by his interest in other forms of
Sufism as exemplified by Ibn al-ʿArabî and the Persian poetry of Mevlânâ Celâleddîn
Rûmî, among others.
54 Unlike other issues, both ʿAtâʾî and by Fuʾâdî concur on this point; see NVA, p. 355 and
MSV, pp. 93–5.
55 The Arabic/Turkish term ümmî has different shades of meaning based on context. The
simplest is “illiterate,” but the term can also have the more subtle meaning of being
insufficiently educated or trained to function in a given position. Some draw a distinction
between ümmî and câhil, in that the former indicates a lack of intellectual knowledge,
while the latter indicates a lack of moral or ethical knowledge. Many Sufi shaykhs actu-
ally claimed the label ümmî as a source of pride; it implied that their mystical knowledge
and advancement on the path had been granted by God through His inspiration (ilhâm),
rather than being a product of educational prowess. For example, a contemporary of
Şaʿbân’s, Ümmî Sinân (d. 975/1568), took the name merely because it was one of the
nicknames of the Prophet Muhammad; RÖ-OT, pp. 92–3. See also the remarks of Éric
Geoffroy, “Ummi,” EI2, vol. 10, pp. 863–4 and also Le Soufisme en Égypte et Syrie sous
les derniers Mamelouks et les premiers Ottomans: Orientations spirituelles et enjeux
culturels (Damascus: Institut Français de Damas, 1995), pp. 299–307. Uri Rubin sug-
gests a link with Jewish religious tradition and thought; see URB, pp. 22–30.
56 Fuʾâdî’s description of Habîb-i ʿAcemî as “pole of the Arabs” has an ironic tone to it,
seeing as his connection to the title of being ümmî derived from his inability to recite the
Qurʾân properly in Arabic due to his Persian origins; see LH, fols 82a–b and 86a (156–7
and 161–2).
57 MSV, p. 59.
58 Araç is a small town lying some distance to the west of Kastamonu on the road to
Safranbolu. A small fortress still survives there to guard the historic road through this
area.
59 MSV, pp. 59–60.
60 MSV, pp. 55–6.
61 MSV, p. 57.
62 Al-Ghazâlî has been framed as inclining toward a rationalized form of mysticism,
whereby having proper knowledge of religious ritual and practice is a key component of
the process of attaining love of God and closeness to Him. See the provisional assess-
ments of his legacy in Knysh, Islamic Mysticism: A Short History, pp. 148–9; Binyamin
Abrahamov, Divine Love in Islamic Mysticism: The Teachings of al-Ghazâlî and al-
Dabbâgh (London: Routledge Curzon, 2003), pp. 61–8; and ʿAbd al-Fattâh Muhammad
Sayyid Ahmad, al-Tasawwuf bayna al-Ghazâlî wa Ibn Taymiyyah (al-Mansûrah: Dâr
al-Wafâʾ, 2000), p. 345.
63 Fragment from al-Qurʾân, 27:24 (an-Naml); the full verse is part of a broader Qurʾânic
narrative dealing with the actions of King Solomon vis-à-vis the Queen of Sheba.
64 Fragment from al-Qurʾân, 36:8 (Yâ Sîn).
65 Al-Qurʾân, 76:5 (ad-Dahr).
66 MSV, pp. 64–5.
67 MSV, pp. 66–7.
68 The ceremony of the devrân, the practice of forming a circle, and performing ritual

motion accompanied by musical instruments as part of the recitation of the Halveti zikr,
was a lightning rod for criticisms directed against the order.
69 MSV, pp. 67–8.
70 Fuʾâdî would reiterate this point in his discussion of the vice of kibir, or pride; see OF-
RMN, fols 179b–80a.
71 The importance of honor in Ottoman society is well documented in Leslie Peirce’s study
of how the Islamic court was used in the province of Aintab during the tenth/sixteenth
century. She found that many of the individuals who came to court did so not in the
expectation of winning their cases, but as a means of utilizing a public forum to maintain
or defend their honor before the community; see Leslie Peirce, Morality Tales: Law and
Gender in the Ottoman Court of Aintab (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,
2003), esp. pp. 179 and 385–6.
72 The entire text of Fuʾâdî’s discussion, as outlined here, appears in a special section in the
work entitled “The Anecdote of Hazret-i ʿAlî," in MSV, pp. 65–6. Fuʾâdî was a master
of this didactic strategy, in which he would ply his audience with a tradition about the
Prophet and/or one of the first four caliphs, then elaborate upon that tradition to comment
on the proper course of action to take in response to a contemporary problem.
73 Repp defined a danişmend as a student involved in the higher education system of the
day, i.e. the Sahn medrese system or anything higher than an educational institution
paying its teachers a 20-akçe stipend. This implies that Ahmed Sâʿatçi Efendi was a
student of some significance; however, the term is notoriously slippery in its usage; see
RCR, p. 37 and n. 23.
74 MSV, pp. 72–3.
75 These four stages were commonly thought by the Halvetis and others to represent a basic
schema of how the seeker on the path grew closer to God, starting with the exoteric
aspects of the Sacred Law (şeriʿat), then mastering the rules of the Sufi order’s path
(tarikat), and thereafter moving into the acquisition of esoteric knowledge granted by
God (maʿrifet), which finally results in a sense of certainty of one’s relationship with
Him through a spiritual vision (hakikat). A modified table expressing the various stages
of the Sufi path along these lines can be found in JST, pp. 152–3.
76 MSV, p. 73.
77 The first chapter of Muhyi-yi Gülşenî’s hagiography explicitly seeks to link İbrâhîm’s
career with that of Mevlânâ Celâluddîn Rûmî by demonstrating how certain poetic cou-
plets from Rûmî’s Mesnevî predicted the subsequent appearance of İbrâhîm; see MİG,
pp. 8–12.
78 MSV, p. 79; the Mesnevî is the greatest poetic work of Celâluddîn Rûmî, widely viewed
as the founder of the Mevlevî order.
79 MSV, p. 78.
80 AG-MM, p. 319; Gölpınarlı also notes close connections between the Mevlevîs in
İstanbul and a twelfth/eighteenth-century descendant of the Şaʿbâniye branch of the
order, Nasûhî Efendi.
81 AG-MM, p. 334. Gölpınarlı explains that the Mevlevî institutions were divided into
âsitânes and zâviyes, with the shaykhs of the former taking precedence over those
of the latter. Unfortunately, we do not have much information on the Kastamonu
branch of the Mevlevî order for this time. Reşat Öngören includes only a couple of
Mevlevî shaykhs for the tenth/sixteenth century, none of them from Kastamonu; see
RÖ-OT, pp. 205–18. Necdet Yılmaz’s more detailed list of Mevlevî shaykhs in the

seventeenth century is equally silent about Kastamonu-based Mevlevî activities save
for one tantalizing exception, that of Kârî Ahmed Dede (d. 1090/1679). Interestingly,
Kârî Ahmed Dede was the son of an unnamed Halveti shaykh in Kastamonu, so we
cannot rule out the possibility, however distant, that he was related to Fuʾâdî or one of
his successors. He went on to become head of the Mevlevîhâne in İstanbul’s Yenikapı
district, and was linked with other Halveti shaykhs during his career there; see NYIL,
pp. 280–1.
82 Such fractiousness was not uncommon in the history of various leaders of the Halveti
order, as noted by Nathalie Clayer in the context of a broader discussion of whether or
not the Halveti can even be theoretically approached as a unified whole; see NC, p. 28.
83 From this we know that the fire’s range and destructiveness were substantial, as the
Atâbey Gazi quarter lay in the oldest part of the city just east of the fortress in the center
of town, and the fire moved northward through the settled part of the city up to the
Honsâlâr mosque on the north-western edge of town; see map in KKE, p. 220.
84 MSV, pp. 68–9.
85 Eyüpgiller provides a diagram illustrating the growth of the city from Byzantine times
up to the present that illustrates this point, although he does not specify exactly when
the growth in various parts of the city occurred during the early Ottoman period of
Kastamonu’s history (defined as 1461 through the eleventh/seventeenth century); see
KKE, p. 56.
86 We know from the imperial edicts of the mühimme defterleri that shortly after Fuʾâdî’s
birth in 967/1560, the small mosque that Seyyid Sünnetî had built was expanded into a
larger mosque that could accommodate the Friday prayer, which confirms that the narra-
tive was historically accurate; see KKE, p. 107 and n. 422.
87 This is shorthand for a Turkish proverbial saying, deve gördün mü? köçeğin dahi gör-
medim, roughly meaning, “let’s keep it between us”; see Robert Dankhoff and Semih
Tezcan, “Seyahat-name’den Bir Atasözü,” Türk Dilleri Araştırmaları 8 (1998): 15–28.
88 MSV, pp. 69–70.
89 Elements of this view appear as early as the seventh/thirteenth century, if not earlier. In
a discussion of how Ibn al-ʿArabî viewed his predecessor, ʿAbd al-Qâdir al-Jîlânî (d.
561/1166), William Chittick notes that Ibn al-ʿArabî did not have any problems with
ʿAbd al-Qâdir’s production of miracles and wondrous occurrences. But he still implic-
itly criticized him by comparing him with his contemporary Abû’s-Suʿûd Ahmad b.
Muhammad b. al-Shibl. Ibn al-ʿArabî argued that since Abû’s-Suʿûd was more circum-
spect in his demeanor and did not take on a public role to the extent that his master did,
he superseded him in his advancement on the mystical path; see William C. Chittick, The
Self-Disclosure of God: Principles of Ibn al-ʿArabî’s Cosmology (Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press, 1998), pp. 376–86.
90 MSV, p. 70.
91 The term vefk refers to a small amulet marked off in the form of a grid, with each square
having some sort of name, word, or number inscribed in it, as seen in the story of Shaykh
Vefâʾ and his protégé in the struggle over the succession in Chapter 2. Perhaps aware of
the importance of the practice in earlier Halveti lore, Fuʾâdî does not deny the legitimacy
of this magical practice outright.
92 MSV, pp. 89–90.
93 Both this and the aforementioned narrative appear in MSV, pp. 70–2.
94 The opening seven verses in the first chapter of the Qurʾân, 1:1–7. Many Halveti

shaykhs and other pious figures in Muslim societies recited this to bless those seeking
their assistance.
95 MSV, p. 80.
96 Given the structure of the language, it is not out of the question that he was merely
involved in the decision to seek Şaʿbân’s help, and did not actually attend the ladies’
session with Şaʿbân. This raises the interesting possibility that the community did not
look askance at Şaʿbân meeting privately with groups of female devotees.
97 For a summary of the historical development of the sipahi, cavalrymen who were
involved in the administration of the sub-units of Ottoman provinces to the end of the
tenth/sixteenth century, see CI, pp. 193–206.
98 MSV, p. 84.
99 MSV, p. 82.
100 Meaning he sought both loans from friends and interest-bearing loans from
moneychangers.
101 MSV, p. 85.
102 MSV, p. 83; read maʿâş for the erroneous mabâş in the printed text.
103 This term is not necessarily used to refer to an individual of Arab descent, but has mul-
tiple meanings in the early modern Ottoman context. In this case, it is most likely used
to distinguish a local resident from the visitors from Rûm; see Jane Hathaway, “The
Evlâd-i ʿArab (‘Sons of the Arabs’) in Ottoman Egypt: A Rereading,” in Colin Imber
and Keiko Kiyotak (eds), Frontiers of Ottoman Studies: State, Province and the West,
vol. 1, (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005), pp. 203–16.
104 MSV, pp. 77–8.
105 The anecdote and Fuʾâdî’s discussion occur in MSV, pp. 76–7, and again in the
Türbenâme section of the work; MSV(T), pp. 180–2.
106 For the influence Khurasan and Transoxiana in the development of Sufi literature
and culture among the Turks, see Ahmet Yaşar Ocak, Kültür Tarihi Kaynağı Olarak
Menâkıbnâmeler: Metodolojik Bir Yaklaşım (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi,
1992), p. 13.
107 It is notable that Fuʾâdî’s conception of the various ranks of sainthood found in the
hierarchy of the unseen world does not follow that of Ibn al-ʿArabî himself. Ibn al-
ʿArabî labels the nukabâʾ as being twelve in number, following al-Qurʾân, 5:12; and the
nücebâʾ as being eight in number, in addition to reversing their order in the hierarchy.
By Fuʾâdî’s time, it seems that aspects of this categorization had undergone some degree
of modification across different branches of the order, thereby calling into question the
extent to which we can assume any common conception of the complexity of Ibn al-
ʿArabî’s teachings; see the description of Ibn al-ʿArabî’s cosmology in SOTS, esp. pp.
96–8 and 103–4. In fact, Fuʾâdî’s description does not even correspond fully with the
account in MİO, pp. 46–8, where Oğuz claims the nukabâʾ are twelve in number, not
three.
108 MSV, p. 79.
109 The full text of this narrative appears in MSV, pp. 74–6.

Chapter
An Uneven Legacy: the Succession

.
to Şaʿbân- ı Veli to the End of the
Tenth/Sixteenth Century
For the population of the Ottoman Empire, the death of the long lived Sultan
Süleymân, the only ruler most had known, ushered in a period of growing insta-
bility. The impending arrival of the Muslim millennium in 1000/1591, and the
political and economic tensions unleashed by the Ottoman Empire’s growing
pains only added to the social and religious tensions of the age. For the nascent
following of the Şaʿbâniye order in Kastamonu, the uncertainty was doubly
pronounced given the illness and death of Şaʿbân-ı Veli shortly after Süleymân.
Despite these challenges, the core membership of the order rallied around its
leaders and principles, and a disparate group of several successors to Şaʿbân’s
legacy emerged who succeeded in maintaining his legacy. These figures had
more direct connections with Şaʿbân’s hagiographer, ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî, and their
relationships with him developed on a much more personal level than Fuʾâdî
could claim with regard to Şaʿbân himself. Still, a careful reading of Fuʾâdî’s
narrative of the post-Şaʿbân era suggests that by the time he acceded to the lead-
ership of the Şaʿbâniye in 1012/1604, the order’s development still remained
uneven in character, and the legacy of its founder was under threat as it receded
into an increasingly distant past.
.
Şaʿbân-ı Veli’s Death and Funeral Stabilizes the Order
One of the pivotal events in hagiography is the death of its subject, and Fuʾâdî’s
account is no exception. Eleven pages in the printed text are given over to the
discussion of Şaʿbân’s passing; as a whole, they make up nearly a sixth of
the chapter devoted to the saint’s life. This comes as no surprise, for given the
troubles that the order had faced during Şaʿbân’s lifetime, the transition to new
156

An Uneven Legacy 157
leadership would be a critical test of his followers’ unity and commitment.
Şaʿbân, unlike some Halveti dignitaries, did try to prepare his followers for the
inevitable:
When . . . Şaʿbân Efendi was about to arrive at the heavenly world . . . the lovers
and dervishes came into his presence. He advised and admonished everyone
according to his level and state. With life-giving words, he gave enlightenment
and elevation to everyone’s soul, and happiness and light to everyone’s heart.
When [his followers] said, “my lord, as soon as you go to the afterworld . . . what
will happen to the state of the path, principles, lovers and dervishes?” he said,
“don’t be pained; refer all your states to God . . . Our end is more auspicious than
our beginning.”1
However, the matter of succession proved to be a more complicated matter for

reasons not entirely of Şaʿbân’s own making. Fuʾâdî indicated that Şaʿbân was
quite clear about the short-term process of transition, and that he sought to guar-
antee stability by naming two immediate successors:
One day, when it was asked of that mine of acts of grace and ruler of saints,
Şaʿbân Efendi, “who [will take] the prayer-rug after you?” he announced the
appointment with God’s inspiration, saying, “ʿOsmân comes, and after him
Hayreddîn comes.” When it was asked, “who comes after them?” he made no
appointment, [but] said “the prayer-rug will find its owner.”2
This account might be challenged as an ex post facto justification that Fuʾâdî

created to legitimize the order’s leadership after Şaʿbân’s death. The prob-
lems Şaʿbân faced in building the order, however, suggest genuine reasons for
concern about avoiding succession struggles. He probably reasoned that annoint-
ing a path of succession would guarantee the necessary time to consolidate the
order to a point where it could chart its own future. On the other hand, he did
not seek to micro-manage the future either. Whether this was a concession to
God’s will, a lack of a third potential successor, or an unwillingness to create too
many powerful figures among the order’s elect membership is unclear. Whatever
the case, he left the order’s ultimate trajectory open-ended, to be claimed by
whoever was judged most qualified to do so. This came to have consequences
earlier than Şaʿbân and his followers expected.
Fuʾâdî’s description of the initial period after Şaʿbân’s death evokes chaos,
natural disorder, and a deep sense of depression. When Şaʿbân’s followers heard
of the passing of the great shaykh, they “wept and wailed with the burning of
separation, and with âh and yâh sighs, their dark anguish rose to the heavens.”

Another witness reported that “the sons of man were not the only ones on the
face of the earth to cry; the angels, the firmament, and the sun and moon in the
heavens also cried. Lightning flashed and thunder roared and all the clouds
wept.” Even after Şaʿbân’s burial, it rained for most of the following forty days,
mirroring the prescribed period that Muslims mourned the dead.3
Whatever Şaʿbân’s attempts at preparing his following, his sudden final
illness and death nevertheless took his followers by surprise. Many in the region
were described as racing to Kastamonu to attend the funeral which, under
Islamic norms, was supposed to be held within twenty-four hours of death. His
appointed successor, ʿOsmân Efendi, could not reach Kastamonu in time for the
funeral, having been sent eastward to Tokat. Some evidence suggests that the
funeral was even delayed until Friday afternoon to accommodate all the comings
and goings that the occasion warranted.4 More disturbingly, when Şaʿbân’s fol-
lowers did come together to prepare the funeral of the great saint, a more potent
controversy with troubling political implications broke out:
The lovers and dervishes saw that nothing would be accomplished by crying.
When they said, “the judgment is God’s, and verily we belong to God,” and set
out to wash and wrap the corpse, generous and wealthy people among his lovers
brought fine shrouds. While everyone was [arguing and] saying, “let him be
wrapped in the shroud that I brought!” Abdussamad Halife brought a shroud that
had been dipped in the waters of Zemzem5 and said, “this shroud belongs to the
noble one himself. I brought it as a gift when I came from the noble pilgrimage.
At that time, he didn’t take it himself; he said, ‘in our path, there is no saying,
“take this, hide it away, and let me be wrapped in it when I die.” In the end, God
is the guarantor for the coffin, and we accepted your gift. Let it stay with you; if
destiny wish it, you shall bring it and wrap [me in it].’ The right is mine.” They
suspected a trick, but after they confirmed and corroborated this state of affairs
with the report of trustworthy witnesses, they broke off [their insistence].6
When we consider the personalities involved, this decision had considerable

implications for the future of the order. Abdussamed Halife was the son of
Eyüb Halife, one of Şaʿbân’s first followers and the person primarily respon-
sible for establishing the Şaʿbâniye lodge near the site of Seyyid Sünnetî’s old
mosque. Thus, the debate can be interpreted as a conflict over who would lay
claim to the great saint’s sanctity. Would it be his oldest followers, who were
not necessarily the greatest sources of temporal power in the community, or
would it be more recent followers who were much wealthier and capable of
laying their own claims to sanctified positions through their own resources?
This broader debate lying behind the issue of Şaʿbân’s shroud was resolved in

favor of the older core of the order’s membership and their descendants, who
had spent most of their lives in service to Şaʿbân and his order. In coming to
this decision, Fuʾâdî presents the order as having successfully upheld its basic
principle, which was to value service to Şaʿbân’s sub-branch of the Halveti
order over access to worldly sources of power and privilege. He may have
been tacitly trying to reinforce this point to the audience of his own time, and
in so doing, illustrate how the order had successfully passed its first test after
the death of its founder.
Although critical, this event was not the pivotal turning point in expanding
the reach of the Şaʿbâniye. The death of the order’s founder, as in other situa-
tions pertaining to public figures in a given society, provoked a powerful surge
of interest among the local population in Kastamonu. Furthermore, it was not
only the local population who took notice of the event; it would be an outside
visitor who played the decisive role in expanding Şaʿbân’s legacy. It is here that
Şaʿbân’s network of friends, built over many decades, appeared to consolidate
his sanctity.
We have already encountered Muharrem Efendi, a one-time follower of
Benli Sultan who had pursued a successful religious career in İstanbul. At the
time of Şaʿbân’s death, he had become a preacher at the Süleymaniye mosque
complex in İstanbul. Yet, coincidentally, he had returned to Kastamonu on some
business, and was about return to the Ottoman capital when the news came. In
his own words, he recounted to the assembled multitude that he had delayed his
departure at the request of his old friend:
[Muharrem Efendi] said, “Muslims! When I wanted to go to İstanbul, and came

to seek [Şaʿbân’s] permission, he said, ‘Muharrem, brother, wait a few days,
pray my [funeral] prayer, and go after that.’ The poor one [Muharrem] said [to
himself], ‘he is not sick [to the extent that] he should die; however, he is sitting in
the cell with the weakness of old age,’ and I deemed his noble request a possibil-
ity. Before twenty days had passed, this situation occurred, and what that mine
of grace [and] the Lord’s wishes were, [they] are now known and established.”
When he bade farewell to the people . . . emotion came over him with these words
of farewell . . . [and] they moaned and cried together like the sheep and the lamb.7
The dramatic setting of the funeral’s imagery conceals the fact that Fuʾâdî may
have taken liberties in presenting Muharrem Efendi as a fully-fledged disciple
of Şaʿbân. It seems more likely that they were friends and contemporaries, and
Muharrem’s exalted position may even have been the more respected of the two
in the eyes of Kastamonu residents.
Still, Şaʿbân’s followers were fortunate to have Muharrem Efendi present to

lead his funeral prayer. Unlike the issue of the burial shroud, because Muharrem
was respected by the local population as a prominent figure who was well estab-
lished in İstanbul’s religious and political circles, pride of place in performing
the funeral prayers was gladly granted to him. His talents in public oratory did
not disappoint those who ceded the task to him. His prominent status in the
broader context of the Ottoman state proved capable of drawing a substantial
crowd. Many, if not most, of the local population in attendence was therefore not
formally attached to the order, and many of them may not even have been aware
of its existence until that moment.
Muharrem Efendi, whose aforementioned background predisposed him to
support the Muslim cult of saints, took the opportunity afforded by the death of
his friend and contemporary to whip the large crowd into a furor over the neglect
they had shown to the greatness in their midst. As Fuʾâdî recounts:
The aforementioned Muharrem Efendi preached and gave advice to the people,
and spoke of the virtuous ones of the order and the anecdotes of the saints on
the occasion. He said about the master [Şaʿbân]: “Muslims! Şaʿbân Efendi was
one of the masters who have manifested sainthood and grace from the time of
the Prophet until this moment, and who are mentioned in the Tezkiretüʾl-Evliyâ8
and other [such works], and whose states and perfection are spoken of [there].
He was a master who would bend over the neck of his horse, and would seek in
such-and-such a province thinking, ‘a good saint and a perfected guide is there,’
and he would find [him] and be satisfied and gain a share of his guidance on the
path of God.” He expressed regret about [the loss of] all of the seekers, saying,
“but what shall we do? We didn’t know his power. What a pity that we have lost
a perfected guide like this!” He praised and lauded those who had lived long
enough to [meet] the master, and those who were satisfied with the knowledge
of God from him.9
For Fuʾâdî, Muharrem Efendi’s funeral eulogy was a wonderful didactic tool
that not only buttressed the legitimacy of S¸aʿbân himself, but also educated
future audiences about how to respond to the death of a great saint. In including
Muharrem Efendi’s sermon, Fuʾâdî knew that the process Muharrem initiated
during this extraordinary event would interweave S¸aʿbân’s funeral into the his-
torical fabric of both Kastamonu and its Islamic tradition. Taking his cue from
a story about the funeral of the great proponent of ecstatic mysticism, Bayâzid
al-Bistâmî, Muharrem Efendi exhorted his audience to participate not just as
passive observers, but to take an active role in the funerary rites of the great
saint:

Muharrem Efendi brought forth the noble corpse of Şaʿbân Efendi, and explained
the virtue and laudability of praying his [funeral] prayer. He related some of the
anecdotes of the saints pertaining to this situation . . . [and] he said: “On the night
that Bayezid Bistâmî passed into the afterlife, [his successor] Ebu Mûsâ saw in
a trustworthy dream-vision that he took the Exalted Throne onto his head. In
fact, when Ebu Mûsâ woke up, and was bewildered by the secret of the vision
and its interpretation, there came into his mind with the inspiration of God: ‘Go
to Bayezid, and let him make an interpretation of the vision.’ Ebu Mûsâ came to
Bistâm, but he saw Bayezid had passed into the afterlife. When Ebu Mûsâ saw
the funeral procession of the noble one, he was not able to grab onto the bier on
account of the crowds and great multitude of people. In the end he went under
the coffin, and took it on his head. Ebu Mûsâ said, ‘the moment that I took the
coffin of Bayezid onto my head, the noble one called to me from inside the coffin,
saying, “O Ebu Mûsâ, the throne that you saw in that dream is mine, you are now
carrying me on your head.”’ Now, let it be known that the virtue of carrying the
[Sufi] masters in this way is as great as carrying the Exalted Throne [itself]!”10
Muharrem Efendi’s use of this anecdote gives us a rare glimpse into how classic
hagiographies that had become embedded into Ottoman Muslim tradition and
religious life even before its heyday were used to exhort Ottoman publics to
action. By citing a well-known source like the Tezkiretüʾl-Evliyâ that illustrated
how exemplars of the past had participated in a great Sufi saint’s funeral, he
guaranteed a groundswell of enthusiasm and a frenzy of public participation in
the present.11 The state of excitement that this generated among his audience
when they emulated the experience of Ebu Mûsâ made the event in which they
participated become a great and memorable episode in their own lives.
To leave no doubt about the benefits his audience was to receive, Muharrem
Efendi, drawing on his experiences with the Bayrâmî shaykhs, went on to recite
the story of an ordinary farmer who had an extraordinary experience after attend-
ing the funeral of Haci Bayrâm:12
The day that Haci Bayrâm Sultan went to the afterlife, a farmer came to the city
of Ankara to get a plowshare repaired. He saw there was no one in the shops;
instead, they had gone to the funeral prayer of Haci Bayrâm . . . He hung the
plowshare around his waist and went to the funeral prayer also. Afterwards, the
ironworkers put the plowshare into the forge, and while they worked hard, they
couldn’t get it hot, and they stood surprised and bewildered. They informed
the chief judge and the müfti. They also were stupefied . . . In the end, when they
informed a noble [Sufi] . . . who was a person having secret knowledge from the
successors of Haci Bayrâm, he asked with the inspiration of God, “where did

you take the plowshare?” As soon as that person gave word that he was present
at Haci Bayrâm’s funeral prayer and that the plowshare was with him, that noble
one among the people of states solved the problem. He explained in pure belief,
saying, “it is a sign that he who prayed the funeral prayer of Haci Bayrâm Sultan
will not burn in the fiery wood of hell, due to the sanctity of that master.” At that
point, Muharrem Efendi exhorted [the audience] to the funeral prayer of Şaʿbân
Efendi, saying, “in reality, Muslims, it is like that!”13
This building sequence of powerful anecdotes from hagiographical literature

then sparked a response for which perhaps even Muharrem Efendi was not
prepared. A near riot erupted as the devotees of the order were in the process of
taking Şaʿbân’s body to the slab at which his funeral prayer would be prayed at
the conclusion of the eulogy. ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî, then only nine years of age, went
on to relive the events that were burned forever into his memory,14 and dem-
onstrate how the crowd had incorporated the elements of Muharrem Efendi’s
speech into a very public form of participation in Şaʿbân’s funeral:
All the people of the land even brought their little children, and while there was
so much desire and inclination to perform the noble one’s funeral prayer, their
desire was increased [even more] by Muharrem Efendi’s words, and there was
a great crowd and throng as in the funeral prayers of Haci Bayrâm Sultan and
Bayezid Bistâmî. My now deceased father made [me] come to [Şaʿbân’s] funeral
prayer when I was a child, [and I saw] when the inner circle of dervishes draped
the black covering, like [that of] the Kaʿba of God [in Mecca], atop the white
coffin in which the beautiful body was placed, and when they placed the black
turban atop his head which was proof that he was the most noble Pole and the
most exalted of Muslims. [I saw] when they came out to pray his funeral prayer,
with the black turban that appears atop the coffin, and with the tevhîd-calls that
the reciting dervishes made with vigor and loud voice. I saw in front of me that
when [Şaʿbân] . . . who was hidden from the eye of the people by being in seclu-
sion for so much time, appeared from the door . . . by vigor, experience [of God],
fever and rapture appearing among the people, one person would shout out with
sincerity while another would weep in anguish. Such a cry of commotion and
a call of yâ hû arose and came forth that it could not be written with the pen or
described with speech . . . They grabbed on to the wooden poles attached to the
coffin like the handholds of the Kaʿba, and some could not even hold on to one
due to the crowd and multitude. But by the appearing of angelic power . . . they
entered under the coffin of the noble one and carried it upon their heads, like
the angels that carried the exalted throne, and like Ebu Mûsâ who carried the
exalted throne in his dream and the following [day] carried the funeral bier of

Bayezid upon his head. Those who could not do that rubbed their hands or their
handkerchiefs on his coffin, his black covering or his black turban, with the intent
of rubbing [their] forehead as at the Beytüʾl-Harâm or the Black Stone,15 and
afterwards they rubbed their faces [with their hands]. In short, there was such a
crowd and throng that the funeral bier could not go forward; it got stuck in place,
and sometimes it went backward, and it was not guided with the haste which is
canonically laudable in making the funeral prayer.16 Since postponement was
necessary, permission was given to the men of the head emîr, who were present
at the funeral, to push away and forbid the people by prudent means and polite
behavior, and they also acted wisely in a customary form. When they forbade and
pushed away the people by a good method, the enlightened coffin was placed on
the funeral slab, and they began the prayer to enjoin mercy and salvation.17
The commotion that ensued was evidently not limited to the funeral proces-
sion. Fuʾâdî’s account of Şaʿbân’s funeral provides insight into how the concept
of relics and sacred substances functioned in rural Kastamonu. For example,
while Muharrem Efendi and one of Şaʿbân Efendi’s followers were washing
the saint’s body, other people struggled to collect the water that was used in the
washing and put it into various kinds of receptacles, or wet their handkerchiefs.
Even those who weren’t able to collect water gathered up the mud which was
created by the spillage, thinking that it would prove valuable in the curing of
illness. Others even tore to pieces the rush matting that Şaʿbân had sat upon
while in his room in the lodge and divided it up among themselves, as if it were
booty taken in a conquest.18 The destruction was not just limited to rush matting.
Şaʿbân’s followers even struggled to place his coffin in the grave:
Before the noble coffin made it to the side of the sepulcher, and the carrying-rods
were taken from the noble coffin, the people broke apart the rods to take a piece
with blessings, saying, “it is from a true saint,” and they distributed it as if [it were]
a living wage . . . They also gravitated to the noble coffin . . . and they clutched the
pieces of the noble coffin to their chests for the cure of the wounds of their hearts,
as if [it were] a part of [their] share of God. They hid it away like their souls, and
. . . it was a cure for problems and a remedy for however many illnesses through the
wisdom of God and the acts of grace of the saints. They fumigated rooms with it [to
cure] fevers and other illnesses. In addition to cures being found by the command
of God, it is known that by an act of grace, yogurt was made by mixing a piece of
the coffin into water, [even] without adding any fermented milk (damûzluk).19
Fuʾâdî’s accounts shows us that the Muslim cult of sainthood could also draw
on the power of relics, for the people valued objects associated with the blessed

aura (bereket) of the saint. The relics had important functional uses that made
them objects of physical as well as sentimental value. Seen in this light, the hagi-
ography’s earlier warnings about hiding one’s miraculous acts of grace from the
general public due to the economic incentives they could generate were clearly
not idle ones. However, what sets these relics apart from their Christian counter-
parts is that they were not spread around to act as attractions for other shrines in
the region, nor were they prominently displayed. They were instead considered
objects of value for personal use, saved for assistance in extraordinarily difficult
situations. Such assistance consisted primarily of the prevention of illness or the
provision of food; this illustrates the major concerns of a pre-modern rural popu-
lation in much the same way as pre-modern European folktales do.20
Another motif common to Islamic saints was the divine illumination of their
tombs. Underscoring the point that failure to participate in a saint’s funeral
meant squandering an important opportunity, Fuʾâdî related the story of a farmer
who had come to Kastamonu to pray the Friday prayers on the day of the funeral.
He heard about the event, but had other business to attend to in town after the
Friday prayer. But later, while walking home through the hills above town, he
noticed that a rainbow appeared that stretched down from the sky toward the
district of Hisârardı where Şaʿbân’s grave was being prepared, despite the fact
that there had been no rain.21 When he mentioned this to Haci Mehmed, the anec-
dote’s teller, Mehmed rebuked him, saying, “oh stupid man! Why didn’t you go
to the funeral prayer of a master like him? That wasn’t a rainbow that appeared.
It was a light from God [shining] upon the noble one!”22 Fuʾâdî extends the illu-
mination metaphor further by stressing that the funeral was attended by the jinn,
angels, and spirits of the unseen hierarchy of saints, who continued to illuminate
the tomb at night even after the excitement subsided.
The excitement of the funeral suggests that the influence of Şaʿbân Efendi
grew more powerful after his death than while he was alive. But this did not
mean that the order had transcended all its problems. A lingering sense of inse-
curity pervades Fuʾâdî’s narrative, and this is nowhere more evident than in his
closing remarks about the events that had transpired:
How many [people] saw, knew and became aware of the anecdotes and states
which were written up to this point from the first chapter [of this work] . . .
So many upright and good-hearted people were like that [person] who sees by
believing in and affirming those who know and see, [and] do not censure. But
how many others also could never see or know, and did not understand the secret,
wisdom, or aspect of those who saw and knew, [but] remained under a veil and
in the valley of ignorance due to [their] censure. Because this point is a divinely
given virtue. Not everyone is guided to it. “Say: Verily bounty is in the hands

of God; he gives it to whomever He wishes, and He is the possessor of great
bounty!”23 The person who will not submit in every respect to a guide on the path
of God, he shall remain rejected and uneducated; he doesn’t know the state and
power of the true saints. Because he who comes to the saint comes to God. It is
also said that some of the seekers are touched by God, while others are touched
by those who are touched [by God]. Both of these are true statements. But if he is
of the people of aptitude, and if he exchanges the useless attributes of his carnal
soul, through struggle and ability, for good attributes, the veils and afflictions
will leave his soul, and his heart will be a mirror full of purity and clarity. He will
be among the people of witnessing and awareness, and he will know the states
and secrets of the saints who are the perfection of the actions and attributes of
God Most High, and the people of the manifesting of the divine essence, and he’ll
be saved from censure.24
Even in a closing statement intended to be the triumphant conclusion of Şaʿbân’s

life and career, the muttering of unconvinced and hostile anti-Sufi factions in
Ottoman society linger just out of earshot, like the sinister whisperings of unseen
spirits. The period following Şaʿbân’s death would see new challenges for his
sub-branch of the Halveti order, and they would develop within a matter of
months.
.
Stabilizing the Sub-branch: Successors ʿOsmân Efendi and
.
Hayreddîn Efendi to 987/1579
The first crisis of the post-Şaʿbân era struck immediately. Şaʿbân’s hand-picked
successor, ʿOsmân Efendi (d. 978/1569), arrived as quickly as he could from his
own lodge in Tokat to take Şaʿbân’s place. Unfortunately for the still grieving
followers of the saint, he was unable to steady the order in the aftermath of the
funeral. His hurried journey to Kastamonu was followed almost immediately
by an ill-advised attempt at initiating ascetic exercises that Fuʾâdî claimed were
rooted in his grief over his spiritual guide’s death. This asceticism took the form
of a forty-day spiritual retreat (erbaʿîn) in Şaʿbân’s tomb, and ʿOsmân, perhaps
still weary from his trek, was not up to the task. According to dates in the hagi-
ography, he died less than two months after Şaʿbân.25
This posed problems for Şaʿbân’s legitimacy – what saint would anoint
a successor who was doomed to follow him to the grave so quickly? Fuʾâdî
tackled this delicate subject by drawing an analogy between ʿOsmân Efendi’s
career as a successor to that of the first caliph after the Prophet Muhammad,
Abu Bakr (d. 12/634). Since Abu Bakr was accepted as being the most virtuous
of the community after Muhammad in the earliest days of Islamic history, he

was clearly the best choice to act as successor, despite the fact that his tenure as
caliph was short in comparison with those who followed him. Fuʾâdî applies the
same logic to the relationship between ʿOsmân Efendi and Şaʿbân, and pointed
out that ʿOsmân was buried on the north side of Şaʿbân’s tomb, another deliber-
ate parallel to the physical relationship between the graves of the Prophet and
Abu Bakr.26
Yet ʿOsmân’s untimely demise was not the only problem that swirled around
his relationship with the order’s following. Fuʾâdî’s anecdotes about the short-
lived successor imply a measure of pre-existing uneasiness about him. For
example, his earlier life required some tactful explanation:
Having a lively and loving disposition, and being a youth full of generosity and
munificence, he was addicted to eating, drinking, [playing] stringed instruments
and conversation with upright friends. But he used to abstain from immorality,
vice and association with evil people [despite this]. While in this state, he ran into
the master [Şaʿbân] at some place, and when he rubbed his face in the dust of
his dignity by kissing his knee and requested his help and prayers . . . the zeal of
the carnal passions was replaced with spiritual zeal, and metaphorical (mecâzî)
love with true (hakîkî) love. He met together with the master again by chance,
and renounced talk of concerns save God, repented from his heart and soul and
pledged allegiance [to the shaykh]. Being on the journey to God, he broke his
stringed instrument into pieces and became one who spoke of naught but the
word of the heart.27
As in the case of the relationship between the Sünbüliye hagiographer Sinâneddîn

and his father Yaʿkûb, we once again encounter a saint who began his career as a
person who may have been considered something of a reprobate.28 While repent-
ing of problems in one’s past was no obstacle to achieving later perfection in Sufi
circles, one can read into Fuʾâdî’s narrative a careful limitation of potentially
sinful aspects of his past. It seeks to present ʿOsmân Efendi as not being the
worst type of sinner, for his companions were not bad people and he needed only
to overcome some bad habits.
This conjunction of issues indicates that a justification needed to be offered for
perceived weaknesses in ʿOsmân’s legitimacy that were not reflected in Şaʿbân’s
piety and longevity. Furthermore, they offer indirect clues about ʿOsmân’s back-
ground in that he emerged out of a prosperous enough background that allowed
him time to eat, drink, and carouse with friends. While the hagiography is oth-
erwise silent on the issue of ʿOsmân’s history, grounds for speculation exist that
his family may have been among the better off in Kastamonu.
Still, had these been the only problems that the community faced in assessing

ʿOsmân Efendi’s brief tenure and legacy, they probably could have been over-
looked. Yet the narrative also implies that ʿOsmân was not always circumspect
in his public discourse and disposition, and this was a cause for concern. At one
point, even Şaʿbân had to step in to defend his successor against the murmurings
of other Halveti dervishes under his guidance:
When [ʿOsmân] came from Tokat to Kastamonu to pay a visit to the master
[Şaʿbân], while making conversation in the place where the dervishes were
having a feast to honor the guest, since ʿOsmân Efendi’s character was open
and his spiritual power advanced, he showed the waves of ecstasy that were in
the ocean of his heart . . . and the pearls of spiritual knowledge that were on the
shore and mother-of-pearl of his soul . . . [W]hen he spoke so many words full
of secrets, some of the people of the gathering with spiritual power could handle
it, [but] some of them not having the ecstatic state could not bear it, and when
they informed the master [Şaʿbân] that he was revealing secrets, that mine of
wisdom and treasury of knowledge listened to them and understood their wishes,
and after thinking a while, said, “my lambs, be silent about ʿOsmân and leave
him to his ecstatic state.” By means of an allusion to explain the perfection of
his proximity and nearness to God Most High, and the perfection of his state
and knowledge in the divine secrets, he commanded: “Dervishes! ʿOsmân is a
descendant of the cushion (minder oğlânı).29 Wherever he should sit, in whatever
manner he should sit, whatever he should say and whatever form he should say it
in is accepted in the presence of God Most High.”30
In contrast to the cautious outlook espoused by Şaʿbân, ʿOsmân was viewed

as somewhat indiscreet in his public utterances; he may have tended toward
the ecstatic range of the mystical spectrum in a way akin to the famed mystic
Mansûr al-Hallâj (d. 309/922). His conduct and remarks clearly worried some of
Şaʿbân’s followers and underscore the point that Şaʿbân’s choice of successor
was questioned even before his death. The order’s concern was not unjustified,
for the tenth/sixteenth century had seen a number of cases in which indiscreet
or misunderstood words had triggered an inquisition and execution at the hands
of the political authorities. Furthermore, while Fuʾâdî is silent on the issue, this
activity may have played a role in attempts by others to put themselves forward
as alternate choices for the succession and chain of authority.
Given the brevity of ʿOsmân’s tenure at the head of the order, the contro-
versy may not have destabilized its following much. Still, there are indications
in the narrative that ʿOsmân himself was not comfortable with his leadership
role. While Fuʾâdî explains ʿOsmân’s activities through reference to his divinely
granted foresight that his life was coming to an end, his actions may also have

reflected a certain discomfort or intimidation at taking Şaʿbân’s place. When
he first arrived in Kastamonu, rather than move into the lodge adjacent to the
complex or take up residence in Şaʿbân’s cell, he instead settled at the foot of
Şaʿbân’s tomb and spent the night there. When the dervishes came the following
morning to take him to be seated on Şaʿbân’s prayer rug, he refused the honor:
[ʿOsmân] let forth a sigh and said, “brothers, this inconsolable one didn’t come
here to give guidance. I came to do the 40-day retreat (erbaʿîn). I’ll pass on to
the afterlife by moving from the corporeal to the spiritual realm on the fortieth
day, because I have no strength for enduring his separation [from me].” When
they said, “God Most High deliver you from grief; the suffering of the master’s
departure is enough for us!,” he replied, “the judgment is God’s. This evening,
the prophet Hızır came, and he dug my tomb on the north side of the noble
one’s.”31
The dialogue may mask a mutual awkwardness inherent in ʿOsmân Efendi’s

sudden return from a distant place, or even a lack of comfort with Şaʿbân’s local
following. Despite Fu’âdî’s best efforts, a sense of discomfort swirls around
ʿOsmân Efendi, and his rapid demise meant that the already troubled order
quickly had to look to the second successor chosen by Şaʿbân.
Hayreddîn Efendi (d. 987/1579), in contrast to ʿOsmân, provided more
stability and longevity. Although Şaʿbân had also sent him away to Amasya
to expand the order there, he seems to have maintained stronger links with
the community in Kastamonu than ʿOsmân. He originally worked as a shop-
keeper in the marketplace and was a respected member of the local commu-
nity, though not among its most powerful elite. Narratives about him suggest
that his relationship with the Kastamonu community was not as awkward.
However, Fuʾâdî’s informant on the matter, Haci İlyâs Efendi, was not an
unbiased source. He was Hayreddîn’s son, whom we encountered through his
recollections about going to the Honsâlâr mosque to hear Şaʿbân preaching.
His friendship with Fuʾâdî and eyewitness accounts of events allowed Fuʾâdî
to humanize Hayreddîn in a way that would have been difficult with the more
mysterious ʿOsmân.
Haci İlyâs is nevertheless an enlightening source for the burdens of Sufi lead-
ership on individual families. Describing his father’s early service to Şaʿbân, he
spoke of the difficulties this created as Hayreddîn became more deeply involved
in the order. He eventually withdrew from the day to day running of his business
and left the shop in the hands of his workers. Eventually, he turned the business
over to İlyâs when Şaʿbân commissioned him to spread the order in Amasya, and
as İlyâs recounted, he proved ill-prepared for the task:

One day the noble [Şaʿbân] . . . sent [my father Hayreddîn] to Amasya with the
successorship. He didn’t take anyone from his family or children [with him], but
he gave to this poor one [İlyâs] a purse into which he placed the capital [from
the business], and he said, “don’t ever empty this purse, and place whatever you
earn into it as soon as you earn it. Take from it, and spend for the specific things
that are necessary for the shop and the house, and take it all out at once and don’t
estimate or count it; place a little or a lot of silver coins into it [without regard
to amount]; it will never run out. But be warned; you should not reveal this to
strangers! If a stranger hears, this state and blessing will depart from the purse.”
The state that he spoke of . . . was confirmed and accurate [regarding] the purse.
I used to estimate that if I were to put in one silver coin, it would generate ten
silver coins, and if I were to put ten silver coins, it would generate a hundred; it
never ran out. The poor one [İlyâs] used to be conceited due to this act of grace;
I didn’t used to balance expenditure with income. One day, an elderly dervish
by the name of Emrullah Dede who was among my father’s friends spoke per-
sistently for the purpose of advice and admonishment: “Did your father tell you
[to behave] like this? Why are you going around in idleness?” This poor one,
neglectfully thinking that Emrullah Dede was among the elder dervishes and not
a stranger, explained the secret of the purse to him and gave word of its nature.
As soon as I said “God willing, the purse doesn’t empty out through the secret
of the saints and the act of grace of the pure ones,” he scolded me, saying, “oh
spendthrift, oh incorrigible one, why are you revealing the secret of the saints?
Did it fall to you to betray the trust of the saints in this way?” After that, I
couldn’t find the state that [existed] before in the purse.32
Once again, this narrative reinforces a primary didactic message in prohibit-

ing public speech about miraculous events, especially if they could be tied to
economic gain. Fuʾâdî emphasizes this point by appending another advisory
note, arguing that it is for this reason that the saints do not reveal their powers to
everyone. If someone who doesn’t understand the problems inherent in wield-
ing this power reveals it, he will cause the Sufi leader a great deal of difficulty.33
But another issue can also be read into the narrative: a potential tension between
Hayreddîn and his son. Instead of looking after the family business in a frugal
and careful way, İlyâs squandered the family fortune with poor decision-making,
as many young people in any given context would be prone to do.
A second anecdote from İlyâs then follows, describing a mysterious encoun-
ter he had two days before ʿOsmân Efendi’s death while passing through the
courtyard of the Ağa İmaret mosque in Kastamonu.34 A dervish approached him
and began to speak to him as if he were an old friend, asking him how his father
was doing in Amasya. When İlyâs said that he had just had news of him and he

was well, the stranger informed him that he had good tidings, for ʿOsmân Efendi
would die in two days and his father would be returning to take his place shortly.
As he turned and hurriedly departed by the courtyard door, a confused İlyâs ran
after him, only to find that he had disappeared. When his father returned, İlyâs
asked him about this. His father informed him, “he is one of the forty who are
perpetually arranging and improving the states and affairs of the sons of mankind
by God’s command.” Hayreddîn had asked him to convey news of the impend-
ing changes to his son to gladden his heart.35
The joy that this news brought once more awkwardly ties into the untimely
death of Şaʿbân’s first successor. But it also demonstrates the hardship that core
followers of a Halveti shaykh could experience once charged with spreading
the order abroad. It required the devotee to uproot himself from his accus-
tomed place, and represented the ultimate test of loyalty to the leadership of the
order and its principle of rejecting all worldly ties. İlyâs’s misuse of the family
finances represented but one manifestation of the disruptions that Hayreddîn’s
promotion imposed upon his family. However, Hayreddîn’s acceptance of the
challenge, and the sacrifices he made was a mark of legitimacy for his succession
to leadership of the order.
Unfortunately, Fuʾâdî gives us little else by which to assess Hayreddîn’s
career after he took over leadership of the order in Kastamonu. Since Fuʾâdî
did not really join the Halveti order until some years after Hayreddîn’s death,
he did not have a great deal of personal experience with either of Şaʿbân’s first
two successors. Nevertheless, his thin coverage seems odd, given that he knew
Hayreddîn’s son; editorially, he must have preferred to move on to other things.
Whatever the case, his brief description suggests that Hayreddîn’s leadership
was solid enough:
In addition to sending perfected and excellent followers to all parts of the world,
his blessed breath was the cause of cures through the power of God. People con-
cerned about necessities, who were afflicted by every illness, sickness, or other
calamity, used to depart from the noble presence satisfied, and others used to
reach satisfaction after some time [had passed].36
Hayreddîn upheld Şaʿbân’s legacy of training additional successors and stabi-

lized the order. He had strong connections with the business and mercantile com-
munities in Kastamonu from his former career, and these people clearly flocked
to him for help and maintained the local constituency. His son’s presence in the
vicinity of a mosque near the metalworkers’ shops may indicate that this was his
former trade.
Fuʾâdî’s limited discussion leaves the historian thinking that we know more

about Haci İlyâs than we do about Hayreddîn himself. The silence is all the
more frustrating because we know that the Şaʿbâniye branch of the Halveti
order, under the aegis of the notorious Şeyh Şücâʿ, had begun a rise to the inner
circles of power in the Ottoman capital through Şücâʿ’s attachment to the royal
court; first, through his introduction to the Ottoman prince Murad III in Manisa,
and then, subsequently, in the Ottoman capital after Murad’s accession to the
throne.37 Informants for the hagiography, arguably the best-placed sources to
speculate on the relationship between Hayreddîn and these events (or the lack
thereof), offer us nothing by which we can assess these developments.
.
ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî’s Teachers: Abdülbâkî Efendi and
.
Muhyiddîn Efendi (1579–1604)
The vagueness that marks Şaʿbân’s chosen successors gives way to a more color-
ful narrative by the time Hayreddîn Efendi’s ten-year tenure as head of the order
came to an end. Hayreddîn’s death marked a turning point, as Abdülbâkî Efendi
(d. 997/1589) would become the first leadership figure who did not receive direct
confirmation from Şaʿbân himself, instead being chosen by the order’s member-
ship so that “the prayer-rug could find its master.” Moreover, Abdülbâkî would
be the figure who would initiate the future hagiographer of the Şaʿbâniye, ʿÖmer
el-Fuʾâdî, into the order.
Yet what is most striking about Abdülbâkî is that he was not always resi-
dent in Kastamonu during his leadership of the order. When Fuʾâdî decided to
pursue the path of Sufism in his mid-twenties, following the memories of his
youth, he went to seek out the successor to Şaʿbân only to find that he had made
an extended trip to his home town of İskilip. Fuʾâdî was told he would have to
wait some time until his return.38 This information is intriguing, as İskilip was
no longer an insignificant provincial center by the 990s/1580s. In fact, it had
made a rapid ascent, having recently received a number of evkaf founded by
the legendary Ottoman şeyhülislâm, Ebûsuʿûd.39 While Ebûsuʿûd also endowed
a number of properties in İstanbul and spent most of his life and career there,
he retained a strong connection with his home town, where his father had been
a prominent Bayrâmî shaykh.40 In addition, the town was not lacking in Sufi
foundations and sites; when Evliyâ Çelebi visited the town in the seventeenth
century, it was home to a surprising number of pilgrimage places and saints’
tombs, and he lists at least five of them by name.41 This activity hints that
Abdülbâkî saw value in directing at least part of his efforts toward his burgeon-
ing home town.
With regard to Abdülbâkî’s early life, Fuʾâdî recounted that he had to live
in the shadow of his father, ʿAlî, who had acquired a good deal of fame locally

for reasons that had nothing to do with Sufism. Both Abdülbâkî’s son and some
of the older folk of İskilip recalled the event for Fuʾâdî many years later when
he asked them why Abdülbâkî’s father was nicknamed “Persian” (ʿAcem) ʿAlî:
[T]hey related that a famed and mighty wrestler came from the lands of Persia
to Anatolia, and when he came to the sancak of Çorum, whichever champion he
was to wrestle with, he defeated [him]. When he was about to depart for İstanbul,
he also wrestled with the champion ʿAlî. [ʿAlî] fearlessly defeated the Persian
[wrestler], and became famous by that name.42
Interestingly, Fuʾâdî corroborated this story by citing additional informants

in the form of several unnamed successors of Necmeddîn Hasan Efendi (d.
1019/1611), a long-time head of the Sünbüliye order in İstanbul. This indicates
that by the first decade of the eleventh/seventeenth century, when Fuʾâdî wrote
his work, the two branches of the order may have established better relations than
narratives from Şaʿbân’s time indicated.43 We do not know how these followers
of the İstanbul-based branch of the order had heard about this event; maybe they
originally hailed from İskilip and only later joined Necmeddîn Hasan’s branch
of the order. Subsequently, they might have been sent to the region, where they
encountered Fuʾâdî as well.
Beyond these connections, however, the story is interesting in and of itself
simply because it reflects upon one of the pastimes of the Anatolian country-
side in the form of wrestling contests staged between local competitors and
traveling professionals. Given the tenth/sixteenth-century time period, one
might also speculate that the wrestler in question might have been part of a
Safavid campaign to demonstrate the physical superiority of their warriors over
their Ottoman counterparts, aiming to sway the opinions of Ottoman subjects
whose allegiance to the state were not strong. ʿAcem ʿAlî’s defeat of this cham-
pion might have carried overtones of Sunnî Ottoman heroics against a Persian
invader. Alternatively, it is not outside the realm of possibility that the name
carried overtones of foreign origin that had to be explained away in the anti-
Safavid Ottoman context.
Fuʾâdî turned this anecdotal background to a different kind of use. Removing
the spotlight from the heroics of Abdülbâkî’s father, he chose instead to illustrate
how the popular sport of wrestling competitions enjoyed by Ottoman communi-
ties could serve as a metaphor for important ideas pertaining to the Halveti path:
According to the understanding [of the Arabic proverb], “the son is the secret
of the father,” . . . his son [Abdülbâkî] did not exert himself in wrestling in the
objective [sense]; he wrestled instead with the powers of the carnal soul which

drew strength from negative attributes which were in the subjective world,
meaning he blocked his soul from obtaining [carnal] needs [from] the base
characteristics of the world. By being victorious over the carnal soul through
this struggle, he learned the rational sciences (funûn-ı ʿakliye) and perfected [his
knowledge of] the transmitted scholarship (ʿulûm-ı nakliye) in the world of utter
poverty. He was a traveler on the path of exoteric [knowledge], and he studied
the best lessons from the most excellent masters, and became famous through
perfected knowledge . . . His carnal passions, which were placed in his human
existence in opposition to the soul by command of God, attacked his human soul
through the power of exoteric knowledge, which gives worldliness and conceit to
a person through the interference of the needs of the carnal soul, and [they] came
out to the lands of humanity from the lands of nature like the wrestler came from
the lands of Persia. When he did not accept or consent to the annihilation of exist-
ence and the leaving of the world, which is the reason for eternal permanence and
eternal life, and wanted to grapple with the wrestler of the carnal passions . . . the
wrestling match announcer (câzgîr) of rational goals entered the playing field and
made the two of them wrestle . . .44
Here, Fuʾâdî builds for his audience an analogy for the struggle that Abdülbâkî
Efendi had with the idea of giving up worldly power and position, drawn from
mastery of the exoteric religious sciences. By using the metaphor of the wres-
tling match, Fuʾâdî created an easily understood image of the struggle that must
take place in every Sufi aspirant between his/her divinely inspired spirit and the
passions of his/her carnal soul. The metaphor also served a purpose in placing
Abdülbâkî’s achievement in the same league as that of his father, which must
have been significant given that tales of it still circulated decades after it hap-
pened. In any case, Abdülbâkî’s solid educational background, like Şaʿbân’s, is
stressed here as the foundation for his career as a mystic. He reportedly even lost
the sight in one eye during his youth on account of his extensive reading, which
led some of his contemporaries to quip that if this hadn’t happened, his knowl-
edge would have been overwhelming in scope.45
Abdülbâkî’s new path, however, left him with a tough choice on how to
proceed. On the one hand, he considered traveling to distant Sofya to study with
Sofyalı Bâlî Efendi (d. 960/1553), one of the most prominent Halveti shaykhs
of Süleymân’s reign.46 However, he also received word of Şaʿbân Efendi in
Kastamonu. Swayed either by his hereditary roots in that area of north-central
Anatolia or convenience, he decided to visit Şaʿbân first in order to finalize his
decision. While speaking with him, he discerned Şaʿbân’s superiority through
clues in his words. When Şaʿbân asked him his name, and he responded,
“Abdülbâkî,” Şaʿbân encouraged him to take up the path of Sufism if he truly

wanted to be a servant of God.47 More importantly, Şaʿbân also remarked to him,
“young man, as soon as you are knowledgeable and learned in the two forms of
knowledge, exoteric and esoteric, you’ll have two wings, and in knowledge of
God you’ll go out and fly up to the highest stations and the exalted throne, and
mix the honey (bal) with oil.”48 Abdülbâkî interpreted this play on the word bal
as indicating Şaʿbân’s awareness of his indecision on pledging allegiance to
Sofyalı Bâlî Efendi, and promptly hailed Şaʿbân as his chosen guide.
Abdülbâkî’s choice was not without significance in the cultural context of the
era. Given the description of Abdülbâkî’s early career as a scholar well versed in
exoteric knowledge, he would have seemed a more natural fit with Sofyalı Bâlî.
Sofyalı Bâlî was an activist involved in the notable religious controversies of his
day; for example, he wrote an influential letter to Sultan Süleymân defending
the practice of pious foundations endowed with cash against the attacks against
it by the şeyhülislâm Çivîzâde. Moreover, Nathalie Clayer has also defined him
as an active crusader against religious groups that he viewed as having strayed
into heretical practices.49 His followers continued to be more influential in the
capital at this time than those of a provincial shaykh like Şaʿbân, as evidenced
by the case of one of his prominent successors, Muslihuddin Nûreddînzâde (d.
982/1574).50 By rejecting Sofyalı Bâlî in favor of Şaʿbân, Abdülbâkî had chosen
Fuʾâdî’s protagonist, who represented a simpler life that was not as involved
with politics and worldly issues over an individual who might otherwise have
been viewed as a far more talented and influential person.
In keeping with general practice, Şaʿbân trained his follower and then
dispatched him to another town in the region to build the order there. Perhaps
recognizing his potential connections in the region around İskilip, Şaʿbân sent
Abdülbâkî to the town of Çorum, a significant town to the east of that region.
The hagiography’s implication of an early attachment to Şaʿbân as his spiritual
master suggests that he spent many years in the region while retaining con-
nections with his home town of İskilip nearby. When Hayreddîn Efendi died,
the notables of the order gathered, and recognizing Abdülbâkî’s long years of
experience and extensive grounding in both the exoteric and esoteric paths of
knowledge, they elected him as the head of the order.51 The networks he had built
in towns further to the east could play a role in consolidating the order further
at a critical juncture. Interestingly, we can see another pattern in that all three of
Şaʿbân’s successors followed a pattern of returning from eastern towns where
they had been sent.
Abdülbâkî endeared himself to the population and following of the order
fairly quickly. One of his practices was to spend Thursday evenings teach-
ing aspects of the Qurʾan and the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad to the
community, in addition to giving the Friday sermon in the mosque. With his

credentials in both exoteric and esoteric branches of knowledge, his sessions
attracted not only the local folk but many of the most prominent scholars of the
immediate vicinity. Fuʾâdî recounted how his public speaking skills had the
ability to stir his audiences emotionally:
When he made speeches from [the place where he sat], and when the dervishes
afflicted with infinite troubles listened with the ear of the heart and soul to the
exposition full of ecstasy and the heart ravishing explanation full of purity,
they became amazed and bewildered. They fell from a state of sobriety into a
state of annihilation, and some grew weary from the ascendancy of love with
the manifestation of the state of ecstasy, and some others shouted out with
ardor. When it came to the cries of hây and hû and the circle of the zikr of God
formed with the ascendancy of the thought of God, sometimes it used to occur
that the noble [Abdülbâkî], by being found in the second stage (fark-ı sânî)
and the [state of] the stage after union (fark-ı baʿdüʾl-cemʿ),52 used to throw
himself involuntarily into the circle of the zikr, and used to occupy himself
with the vocal zikr which was the cause of divine openings for the dervishes
through the state of rapture. Through this eagerness and witnessing, many
people became part of the order and achieved satisfaction, and he sent follow-
ers to all parts.53
From this account, one senses that Abdülbâkî’s stature and willingness to engage
in a more public role by reaching out to all levels of the local population as head
of the order helped to increase the order’s strength and visibility in the region.
Yet Abdülbâkî’s partial absence from the Kastamonu scene leaves a contin-
ued narrative absence with regard to critical changes taking place in Şaʿbâniye
circles elsewhere. Abdülbâkî’s accession coincided with the height of the power
and influence of his counterpart Şeyh Şücâʿ at the court of Sultan Murad III. We
know this from the resources that Şücâʿ was directing into the Şaʿbâniye site in
Kastamonu; however, no relationship between the two emerges in the account.54
Whatever Şücâʿ’s role in the activities of the order, Abdülbâkî followed
Şaʿbân’s example by using exoteric knowledge discussions to draw a public
following, and then recruiting from his audiences to build the order. The order
that Fuʾâdî would inherit fifteen years later may well have been a product of
Abdülbâkî’s decade of leadership. Fuʾâdî alludes to the growth of the order by
stating that the number of members had grown so large that he could not include
this information even in the longer version of his hagiographical work, much
less the abridgement. Instead, he directed those who were interested in tracking
the development of the order’s membership to a specific informant who was still
living at the time he wrote the work, Elmâcızâde Muhyiddîn Efendi.55

Despite his clear admiration for Abdülbâkî, Fuʾâdî was unable to complete his
Sufi training with him before his death. We might speculate that this had some-
thing to do with Abdülbâkî’s absence from Kastamonu; we know that he died
in İskilip and was buried there, rather than with Şaʿbân Efendi and his first two
successors.56 Yet Fuʾâdî’s strong feelings for him are clear, as he was reluctant to
discuss anecdotes about his former teacher, especially acts of grace associated with
him. Abdülbâkî not only shared Şaʿbân’s aversion to public proclamation of his
acts of grace or direction of divine intervention to his followers; he went one step
further and insisted that they should not be discussed even among private circles
of his followers, even after his death.57 As a result, Fuʾâdî pointedly abstains from
any further description of the events of his master’s career, perhaps out of genuine
concern on his part to avoid raising these discussions in an environment where
contemporaries were still present. He directs his audience’s attention instead to the
fourth and final successor, Muhyiddîn Efendi.
With the death of Abdülbâkî, Fuʾâdî apparently did not shift his allegiance
to any new potential successor, and other followers of the order may not have
done so either. By his own admission, for several years after Abdülbâkî’s death,
Fuʾâdî left the Sufi path and engaged in other pursuits, which indicated some
disruptions over who would fill Abdülbâkî’s shoes. This may have had some-
thing to do with Muhyiddîn’s more humble origins, as he originated neither from
the Kastamonu region nor from a scholarly background as Abdülbâkî had. He
had not even entered the Sufi path through the direct agency of Şaʿbân himself,
but through one of his minor followers, Mahmûd Efendi, who was giving guid-
ance in the town of Küre-i Hadîd (literally, “Iron Forge”), a village in the area
of modern day Araç, west of Kastamonu whose name suggests a mining-based
economy.58 While we have seen that the towns and villages around Kastamonu
were not incapable of generating competent religious scholars, some in the order
may have been put off by the lack of a higher profile successor.
However, careful research shows that Mahmûd Efendi did make a contribu-
tion to the Şaʿbâniye canon that would prove influential among later generations.
This was a short epistle entitled Risâle-i Tâciye (“Treatise on Headgear”), which
came to occupy a place in the hearts of the Şaʿbâniye and was included among
a compilation of Fuʾâdî’s later writings, despite the fact that he was not the
author! Mahmûd Efendi explained the circumstances of his letter’s composition
in Arabic before switching over into Turkish:59
When some of the brothers requested knowledge of the canonically appropriate

dervish headgear (qalansuwah), for the purpose of opposing [some] disruptive
men (al-rijâl al-maftûnah), the poor one Mahmûd b. Nafs b. Kamâl b. Maʿsûd
[. . . wanted . . .]60 to compile what he understood from the Book, the practice of

the Prophet, the consensus of the community, and whatever [else] discusses [the
issue of headgear] from the religious sciences, so that it will be a benefit for the
surety of the believers, a gentle [reminder] for the doubts of the waverers, and a
defense against the censuring of the censurers.61
Despite some difficulties in interpretation, we learn that the text was put together
sometime around the mid-point of the tenth/sixteenth century as a means of
deflecting anti-Sufi criticism of practices surrounding the wearing of dervish
headgear. This follows a pattern, as it is not the only known Halveti tract
from this period about the topic; Seyyid Seyfullah Kâzım b. Nizâmeddîn (d.
1009/1601) also penned a short tract on the matter in İstanbul in roughly the
same period.62 This suggests that headgear issues became an important topic
about which many shaykhs of the period felt obliged to comment. In the case
of Seyfullah, he phrases his tract in the form of answers to commonly asked
questions about the nature of the headgear his dervishes were wearing, such as
whether it was a strict requirement for them, or just a canonically laudable act.
But the defensive tone of his short missive is also apparent, in that the question-
ers claim that the headgear being worn could not be justifed by past practice, as
it had fourteen seams instead of twelve.63 In the aftermath of the Safavid wars,
dervishes arriving from, or having connections to, founders who had lived in the
eastern regions of the Islamic world were probably subject to suspicious inquiries
about the nature of their beliefs, especially if their dress set them apart from the
general population.64 Seyyid Seyfullah’s multiple interpretations of the numeri-
cal value of the fourteen seams (terk) and fourteen caps (kisve) of his branch of
the order’s headgear linked it firmly to orthodox mainstays, such as the twenty-
eight words of the opening chapter of the Qurʾan, the number of the virtues and
vices to be conquered as part of their path, and the number of actions required to
complete the ritual washing (abdest).65 What this indicates in terms of Mahmûd
Efendi’s version of this project is that even at the village level, some anti-Halveti
activity was present. Mahmûd Efendi saw wisdom in proffering a simple text
that his less advanced following could use to deflect the attacks of their detrac-
tors. Incidentally, Fuʾâdî’s prolific output in later years about Şaʿbâniye rules
and practices suggests that Mahmûd’s example may have inspired him to expand
upon that legacy (see Part III, below). In fact, one of Fuʾâdî’s later works paid
tribute to Mahmûd Efendi by commencing with a discussion of the importance
of Sufi clothing and dress in its first chapter.66
As for Mahmûd Efendi, his tract serves the historian well by reproducing
for his readers the attacks to which he felt compelled to respond. The censurers
complained that the Prophet Muhammad had never worn this type of headgear,
charged that the Halvetis had invented it of their own accord, and that it was

therefore an innovation (hâdes). Basing his response on a Prophetic tradition that
“whosoever resembles a group, he is among them,” Mahmûd Efendi retorted that
nobody had ever interfered with the great shaykhs of the past on this matter, and
if his opponents had any justification from the books of the law against wearing
headgear, they should produce it. Moreover, Mahmûd instructed his followers
that their response to this attack should be that going against the Qurʾan, tradi-
tions of the Prophet, and consensus of the community is the real innovation.
Tracing his opponents’ logic, he indicated that they might have been drawing
on a tradition from the chapter on clothes in a work entitled the Masâbîh, which
stated that the Prophet and his companions wore only headgear that was “not
raised (ghayr murtafiʿ).” But since the Prophet also said “[there is] no hardship
in our religion (lâ jurh fî dîninâ),” there should not be any fighting over this
issue. He goes on to state that during the time of the Prophet Muhammad, there
were four types of headgear: the “dâl” hat (shaped like the Arabic letter dâl),
which resembled the Halveti cap of Mahmûd’s day; the knitted cap (örme); a terk
similar to what the Bektaşi dervishes wore; and an on iki terk (twelve-seamed
headgear) similar to what the Zeyniye dervishes wore.67 Since both Muhammad
and the four Rightly-Guided Caliphs all wore these types of headgear, there
could be no prohibition against them without violating the consensus of the com-
munity or declaring founding figures in the religious tradition to have violated
Islamic doctrine!
Mahmûd’s argument may not have been convincing for skeptics; his source
for the practice of the early Islamic community consisted only in the introductory
phrase “it is related that (rivâyet olunur ki).”68 But the overall tone of the tract
suggests that, in contrast to Seyyid Seyfullah, Mahmûd Efendi’s goal was not
to win over his enemies. In fact, at one point he suggests that the attacks of the
censurers could be a good thing:
Let it be known to [you] faithful ones . . . that you will never have any hardship
on account of their throwing these sorts of . . . curses at [you]. Perhaps the levels
of its blessing and benefit are many, since [you] should be forbearing and patient
. . . Let [you] leave off fighting and confronting these kind of censurers. Because
it is known to everyone that a person doesn’t throw stones at a tree without fruit
[on it]. It is also no secret to a rational person that most of the immature youths
who throw stones [do so to] trees that are full of fruit!69
Over half of the tract is given over to explaining to the dervishes themselves
the various forms of symbolism embedded in the characteristics of the Halveti
dervish headgear and its various forms. Drawing on the basic principle that
“all of Sufism is etiquette,” Mahmûd Efendi’s letter reads more like a pep talk

designed to encourage the dervishes to take pride in wearing their headgear and
to embrace the symbolism in it. For example, the novice dons a white turban,
then works his way up to the black of a perfected master; for the color black
symbolizes the successful break from worldly goods and the annihilation of the
self.70 In addition, the four named parts of the headgear correspond both to
the first four Rightly-Guided Caliphs and the four fundamental components of
the Sufi path embodied in the concepts of şeriʿat, tarıkat, maʿrifet and hakîkat.71
While Mahmûd Efendi’s contribution to Halveti literature may have acted
as a resume builder for his follower, Muhyiddîn Efendi, it also did not propel
him to a high ranking place in the order outside his regional milieu of Araç.
Furthermore, Fuʾâdî’s description of Muhyiddîn Efendi’s early career does not
necessarily indicate an auspicious beginning that would lead him to become
a high profile leader in the order. His master Mahmûd Efendi suddenly died
shortly before the completion of Muhyiddîn’s training in Küre-i Hadîd, leaving
the troubled dervish little choice but to come to Kastamonu to ask for guidance
from Şaʿbân himself. When he threw himself on Şaʿbân’s mercy, saying that
he had lost his shaykh and that he was nothing but a stranger, Şaʿbân replied,
“the judgment belongs to God. Be well; if you are a true seeker and lover [of
God], he who wants shall find God. You aren’t a stranger in this lodge. You be
a reminder of Mahmûd Efendi for me. We’ll serve [you] in the degree that we
can.”72 Muhyiddîn thus joined the order in Şaʿbân’s later years, after he and his
supporters had established a lodge for him to live in at the future site of his tomb.
This was in contrast to Şaʿbân’s previous three successors, who had all entered
his service while he was still preaching at the Honsâlâr mosque.
In addition to his late arrival, being a poor man from the rural area west of
Kastamonu, Muhyiddîn Efendi lacked the means to take up residence in the area
of Şaʿbân’s lodge in the Hisârardı quarter of the city. In fact, he seems to have
had trouble securing any residence at all, which is noted in one of the narratives
about him:
Since there was no heat in the lodge, and since he suffered greatly on winter
days, he used to live in poverty in a warm room attached to the bathhouse next
to the Honsâlâr mosque, and used to come to the lodge from one end of the city
to the other. In addition to never missing a single one of the pillars [of Islam], he
was charged with the duty of beginning the supererogatory night prayers (tehec-
cüd tevhîdi) with one of the gatekeeper dervishes. It is related that on account of
his complete zeal and effort, he never neglected his duties, thinking, “let there
be no deficiency in my education by [my] being derelict in my duty,” and sleep
never came to his eyes, and he was always present at his service in the mosque
at the time of supererogatory night prayers. He never used to pass up his duties

[by remaining] at a great distance on snowy, icy or muddy days in particular.
The noble [Şaʿbân] used to observe him secretly, enjoy [his efforts] and make
prayers. What a delight it is that a trustworthy seeker should serve the order
faithfully, and will become suitable and deserving of the prayers of blessing and
exalted favors of the noble ones who are the representatives on the prayer-rug of
a master like him!73
Thus, Muhyiddîn spent his initial years of service to Şaʿbân Efendi as a border-
line homeless person, living on the grounds of the lodge itself when the weather
permitted and, perhaps by utilizing the connections of his master, staying tem-
porarily in the Honsâlâr bathhouse when winter threatened deadly exposure to
the elements.
Nevertheless, the branch of the Halveti order that Şaʿbân established rec-
ognized meritorious service as an important part of progress in the acquisition
of the path, and Muhyiddîn’s dedication was impossible to ignore. His contem-
poraries would discover that whatever Muhyiddîn lacked in terms of esteemed
origins, he made up for it in raw devotion. Fuʾâdî’s final exclamation emphati-
cally celebrates upward mobility on the Sufi path and within the order based on
struggle displayed by its adherents. It also demonstrates his recognition that this
anecdote could serve as an important teaching tool for his audience about dedi-
cation to carrying out one’s assigned tasks within the order. His advisory note
states:
It is true that the great shaykhs help, and offer prayers for their dervishes and
others, but they must make themselves deserving of their prayers and assist-
ance. If it were only through the help of the prophets and shaykhs [alone], the
prophets would have left no unbeliever or hypocrite in the world, but made them
all Muslims, and the shaykhs would have left no corrupt person or censurer in
the world, but would have made them pious and believing [people] through
guidance!74
In other words, saints are not placed on earth strictly for the purpose of saving
mankind from troubles and pains; one must also work to earn intercession. In
addition to stressing the need for the followers of the order to hold up their end
of the bargain vis-à-vis the shaykh, Fuʾâdî also kills two birds with one stone
by offering additional explanations for the existence of critics who censured the
cult of saints. Comparing them with those who are not deserving of the prayers
of the great men, they are an inferior category of people who do not uphold their
religious obligations.
It is difficult to interpret how Şaʿbân wanted to utilize his new recruit. After

Muhyiddîn completed his training, Şaʿbân resolved to send him not to the tra-
ditional successor stomping grounds of the towns and villages in the area of
Kastamonu and north-central Anatolia, but to the more distant city of Damascus.
This may demonstrate a broader ambition to which Şaʿbân was aspiring by the
end of his career, when he had already established a stable base of followers
within the immediate vicinity of the Anatolian part of the empire. Furthermore,
Muhyiddîn’s extraordinary devotion in the face of adversity may have made
him a more attractive candidate to undertake what would have been a difficult
task at best. Still, Şaʿbân was sending his follower a great distance away from
the order’s home base, rather than keeping him close to the seat of the order’s
operations, and this might also reflect Muhyiddîn’s actual rank within the order.
He may have been viewed as an expendable member who could be sent on a
relatively dangerous and difficult mission whose chances for success were at
best uncertain.
Within the narrative, other elements appear which imply that Muhyiddîn’s
mission did not have any real success, and that even his eventual succession to
the order was an ill-defined process:
[Muhyiddîn] served the lord Şaʿbân Efendi for a long time, and he sent [him] to
Damascus on the completion of his training. He stayed there for a time and made
the pilgrimage. Afterwards, it became clear and known to him by command of
God that it would fall to him to give guidance in Anatolia, and that he would be
the representative on Şaʿbân Efendi’s prayer-rug . . . Because of this, he again
came to Anatolia and increased his devotions in a stone cave located in his own
homeland in the environs of Kastamonu for the purpose of greater advancement,
just as the Messenger of God did in the cave on the mountain of Hirâ.75 While
performing the pillars [of Islam], the successorship on the prayer-rug of Şaʿbân
Efendi was vouchsafed to him by the command of God, according to what is
explained in our more detailed hagiography, and began to give guidance.76
Fuʾâdî’s unwillingness to confide the details of his immediate predecessor and

teacher’s accession to the leadership of the order in his abridged hagiography,77
and his use of the passive voice in saying that Muhyiddîn was vouchsafed
(müyesser oldu) the position, suggest that the succession to Abdülbâkî Efendi
may have raised questions about Muhyiddîn’s suitability. It is also not specified
how long Muhyiddîn actually stayed in Damascus, or in his cave, which was
located outside his master Mahmûd Efendi’s base of Küre-i Hadîd. The lack of
detail may just imply a lack of knowledge on Fuʾâdî’s part, but this seems hard to
believe since he became Muhyiddîn’s own successor! The lack of detail may be
an attempt to mask or downplay an initial failure to establish a stable succession

at Abdülbâkî’s death (perhaps because he was not resident in Kastamonu much
of the time). It probably took time for Muhyiddîn to win over the order’s mem-
bership after emerging from his cave. Regardless of the reason, it was probably
striking even to contemporaries that the leadership of the order had passed from
a noted scholar like Abdülbâkî to a provincial hermit like Muhyiddîn. While
the argument might be raised that Muhyiddîn was not out of line and just fol-
lowing a variant of the Halveti model established by figures like Hayreddîn
Tokâdî or Benli Sultan on İlgâz mountain, these figures had at least established
a fixed residence there for their activities. As far as we can tell, Muhyiddîn just
took up residence in a cave and there is no record of his giving guidance to
anyone!
These irregularities may explain why Fuʾâdî did not consider himself active
within the order for several years after Abdülbâkî’s death; he and others like him
may have been skeptical about the situation. Aside from his work ethic, however,
another key to Muhyiddîn’s succession may be implied by recalling the narra-
tive from Haci İlyâs’ visit to the mosque in the district of the metalworkers’
shops. Both Hayreddîn and Muhyiddîn are linked circumstantially with mining
and metalworking activities in the Kastamonu region. A potential constituency
within the Şaʿbâniye included people involved in this trade, and a shaykh from
the town of “Iron Forge” might have had some affinity with them, whatever
the reservations that may have existed among the more scholarly followers of a
leader like Abdülbâkî.
Much of this remains in the realm of speculation, but what is clear is that
Muhyiddîn slowly won back the followers of Abdülbâkî through his acts of
grace, kindness, and charity. Interestingly, although Fuʾâdî hovers in the back-
ground to remind his audience that these manifestations of spiritual power should
be kept secret “since all true friends of God behave in this way,”78 he is not as
reluctant to discuss Muhyiddîn’s spiritual abilities as he is in the case of the
more cautious Abdülbâkî. This suggests a difference in outlook between the two
figures, for Fuʾâdî describes two events that discuss Muhyiddîn’s ability to sense
the impending death of a fellow Şaʿbân-trained successor. The first narrative
describes a journey that Muhyiddîn and some of his followers were making to
the area of Çağa (Yeniçağa), a small town lying to the west of Gerede on the road
to Bolu (also linked to Şaʿbân’s early life). Due to the heat of the summer, many
of the dervishes wanted to stop and rest a day’s travel from Çağa, but Muhyiddîn
ordered them to get up and continue the journey. While some of the dervishes
dutifully struggled on at the side of their master, others refused and stayed where
they were in the hope that they could catch up later. It was not until the traveling
party reached Çağa that the reason for haste became clear; another of Şaʿbân’s
successors who had settled there, Hayreddîn Efendi, was about to die:

When the noble one named Hayreddîn was about to depart to the afterlife, that
mine of grace said to those who asked, “who will pray your funeral prayer?”
[He replied]: “Complete the washing and wrapping [of my corpse], and then
delay [the burial]; the noble one who will pray my funeral prayer will come.”
They did [everything] in that way, and while [they were] waiting and saying, “I
wonder who’ll come,” the shaykh [Muhyiddîn] came hurrying to the settlement.
Its inhabitants received him, and they prayed the noble one’s funeral prayer in
purity. Those who did not follow the noble [Muhyiddîn] and remained behind
on the road were blocked from the noble [Hayreddîn’s] funeral prayer and its
merit and regretted [it], like the dervishes who are not obedient to the shaykh, fall
behind on the road of the path of God, and remain blocked from achieving their
wish and regretful. But last regrets have no benefit!79
Fuʾâdî’s inclusion of this anecdote once again underscores how his selection
of material acted to teach and reinforce proper Sufi behavior for his audience.
It meshes nicely with the events of Şaʿbân’s funeral in emphasizing the twin
requirements of obeying the leadership of one’s shaykh and taking part in the
funeral prayers of the great Halveti leaders who had reached the final stages of the
path. One might also read into it some of Muhyiddîn’s difficulties in establishing
himself as the head of the order in its early years. We know from the language
that Fuʾâdî employs that he was not present on this journey, because he reports
these events by way of the dubitative Turkish verb suffix -miş. Nevertheless,
the division of his following into those who passed the test and those who did
not may have paralleled the division of the order’s followers into a group who
followed Muhyiddîn and those who dropped out or moved on to other shaykh.
This was not the only funeral that Muhyiddîn Efendi rushed to preside over.
He also had to take extraordinary steps to appear in Bolu for the funeral of his
own brother and fellow Şaʿbân-trained successor, Mustafa Dede.80 Apparently,
he had a garden or orchard (bağ) in Bolu that was his livelihood, and one day he
fell ill there. Just before he died, he told his immediate family members not to
wash his corpse because his brother was coming. He also made an even odder
request to the effect that “. . . my corpse not be taken out from the gate of the
orchard; knock a hole in the wall of the orchard in such-and-such a place and
you should carry [it] out from there. Because that which comes out from the
orchard gate has to pass by the side of the unbelievers’ church and graveyard;
be very careful!” After his death, though, the local religious dignitaries (ulemâ
ve sulehâ) refused to honor Mustafa’s will, because they knew it would take too
long to bring Muhyiddîn Efendi from Kastamonu and it would violate religious
law to leave the corpse unwashed and unburied for so long. Still, when they
tried to begin washing the corpse, their strength miraculously left them and no

one could finish the job. Next thing they knew, they found Muhyiddîn arriving
through a hole in the wall of the orchard with several of his dervishes in the
exact place that Mustafa had specified, having rushed from Kastamonu to get
there. The funeral was then conducted according to Mustafa’s wishes, avoiding
the Christian church and graveyard in the process.81 As in the stories of Şaʿbân’s
divine hand of protection, what we may be seeing are multiple oral variations on
a similar anecdotal theme or trope; it is worth noting, for instance, that Cemâl
el-Halvetî performed the same unexpected service, predicted in advance by its
recipient, Pîr Fethullah, a fellow dervish whose origins lay in the Kastamonu
region.82
However, another possible conclusion we can draw from these stories is
that Muhyiddîn saw it as important to travel around the area of Kastamonu to
reunify or strengthen the coordination of Şaʿbân’s followers. His predecessor
Abdülbâkî’s absences from Kastamonu, and the growth of the order during those
years may also have led to a need for frequent trips across the region. Noting
the spectacular growth of the order during his lifetime in the conclusion to the
section describing Muhyiddîn Efendi, Fuʾâdî stressed that despite the various
acts of grace that accompanied the careers of the first four successors to Şaʿbân,
their greatest legacy was simply that they were able to guide and spread the prin-
ciples of the order to such a great number of people.83
Another piece of evidence corroborating this possibility and demonstrating
the extent to which the Şaʿbâniye had achieved regional influence in north-
central Anatolia was Fuʾâdî’s own personal experience. After pledging his alle-
giance to Muhyiddîn, Fuʾâdî fell into debt and needed to borrow money:
During the time of this poor one’s seeking and submission to [Muhyiddîn],
an amount of gold coins came from the father of Sultan Ahmed Han, Sultan
Mehmed Han [to Muhyiddîn] . . . [and] I had [previously] taken several gold
coins [from that sum] as a loan. One day, in order to comfort the noble heart and
show respect to his esteemed welfare, I intended to say, “don’t let the issue of
[my] debt to you come to mind; it is possible that a necessary and willing post-
ponement [will] occur; let it be known by the esteemed one.” Before the poor
one even spoke, [Muhyiddîn] was instantly aware through the inspiration of God,
and he immediately looked the poor one’s way without reason and replied with a
manifestation of nobility and charismatic grace, “your wish is to postpone on the
matter of that debt, but what kindness is there in postponing [it]? Never think of
it again; let all of it be a gift to you.”84
Like Kelle Mustafa before him, we see another demonstration of how shaykhs
could secure the loyalty of their followers by acting as charitable lenders.

However, the more interesting revelation here is that it directly confirmed that
the order and its followers continued to receive patronage from the Ottoman
court. Sultan Murad III had already contributed to the financial well being of the
order under the influence of Şeyh Şücâʿ, more surprising is that these contribu-
tions to the order did not cease with his son Mehmed III. The growing influence
of the order in the region, whatever its troubles, made it a prime target for the
patronage of the Ottoman sultan and his court, which in turn could help secure
the loyalty of the Anatolian population. Thus, when Fuʾâdî inherited the leader-
ship of the Şaʿbâniye at the beginning of the eleventh/seventeenth century, he
inherited not just a spiritual role in the region, but a political one with ties to the
highest levels of government.
Yet the hagiography is silent on another key point. Muhyiddîn’s travels
might have become increasingly difficult in the context of the last years of the
tenth/sixteenth century, when revolts and disturbances rocked both urban and
rural parts of Anatolia as a consequence of Ottoman military over-extension and
growing economic crisis caused by shifts in the global economy and climate
change. We know that the Celâlî revolts and other disturbances destabilized the
functioning of the empire almost to breaking point after Mehmed III’s accession
to the throne.85 Muhyiddîn’s activities may well have been constrained in the
final decade of his life, as the population retreated to safe havens for protection
from the chaos that engulfing much of the Empire.
***
After Muhyiddîn’s biography, the lives of Şaʿbân Efendi and his successors
draw to a close with a final advisory note from Fuʾâdî, who informed his audi-
ence that the purpose of all these stories was enlighten the truly intelligent and
perfected people, who could seek to emulate them in their own struggles on
the path. By recognizing the characteristics and attributes that marked the great
shaykhs, they themselves could one day take their places among their number.86
Fuʾâdî’s parting words remind us once more that he was not a passive recipi-
ent or transmitter of the order’s history, but an active participant in shaping and
transforming how that history was to be received and used by future generations
of Şaʿbâniye devotees.
Despite his multiple agendas, however, ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî has performed a
great service for the historian by illustrating, however inadvertently at times, the
origins, growth, and transformation of a major sub-branch of the Halveti order
during its formative era over the course of the tenth/sixteenth century. The events
discussed in Part II of this work teach us a great deal about how Şaʿbân and his
successors came to found, develop, and transform this new sub-branch of the

Halveti order to the point where it became a political, as well as spiritual force in
the Anatolian landscape.
At the close of the tenth/sixteenth century, Fuʾâdî and other prominent
Şaʿbâniye followers sensed a need to reflect on the history of their order and
make some attempt to codify it in writing, especially the life of its founder,
Şaʿbân-ı Veli. Yet their retrospective, by default, could not avoid interacting
with contemporary concerns. Fuʾâdî’s narration of this history is not limited to
providing important insights on the way he and his compatriots interacted with
that legacy; in short, not everything he touched upon represented an attempt to
rewrite the past solely to address the concerns of the present. If read carefully,
his writings can help illustrate the types of critical issues that provincial Halveti
shaykhs like Şaʿbân and his successors faced in building sub-branches of the
order in the wake of their predecessors’ migration into Ottoman territories.
For one, Halveti shaykhs like Şaʿbân Efendi did not enter a spiritual leader-
ship vacuum when they came to establish a new branch of their order in new
places. Legacies left by earlier figures like Seyyid Sünnetî Efendi, along with
a profusion of saints’ tombs from previous centuries were not always easy to
displace. In addition, shaykhs of other orders, or even competing shaykhs from
divergent regional branches of the Halveti order itself might vie for the alle-
giance of Ottoman subjects in any given region. Şaʿbân’s life was not a chain
of invariable triumphs; rather, it was often marked by setbacks and failure.
For this reason, the hagiography’s chronology is not always easy to discern,
and the establishment of his following was a long, drawn-out process that was
measured in decades. Contrary to the impression given in some hagiographical
works, only rarely could Halveti shaykhs come into a community and immedi-
ately begin recruiting the population into the order, and the impression we get
from the early careers of Şaʿbân and the other successors of Hayreddîn Tokâdî
was that they had to build a community from the ground up, with a heavy
emphasis on the most basic aspects of Islamic law and practice at first. Only
after they had won the trust of the local members of the community in which
they resided were they able to pursue the broader goals with which they were
charged.
In addition, Fuʾâdî’s account confronts a point that is easy to overlook in
studying the history of Sufism. The path to becoming a true Halveti shaykh did
not end with the investiture of a cloak by a shaykh to a follower deemed to have
reached the proper state of spiritual advancement to make him capable of giving
his own guidance. Rather, the process of perfecting the Sufi path often contin-
ued in the years thereafter. One’s shaykh might pass away, or the shaykh-to-be
might find that elements of his master’s practice did not suit the new situations
he encountered. As Şaʿbân struggled to build his own foundation, he also had to

learn a new set of lessons that went beyond those of his training under Hayreddîn
Tokâdî.
Şaʿbân’s life story also suggests the struggle that Halveti shaykhs had to wage
in the face of a pervasive mistrust of mystical movements in Ottoman society
over the course of the tenth/sixteenth century. Even Şaʿbân himself expressed
misgivings about the Halveti order before he was initiated into its ranks, and
hostile scholars like Evliyâ Şücâʿ were always lurking in the background
to attack anything they viewed as a deviation from proper religious norms.
Şaʿbân’s cautious oversight of his following, and his desire to avoid obtaining
an overly high profile in his community indicate the degree to which the Halveti
shaykhs of the first half of the tenth/sixteenth century feared becoming a target
for the political persecution of over-zealous contemporaries. Moreover, Şaʿbân
had problems with rebellions and disobedience among some of his own follow-
ers and successors who, as the anti-Sufi persecutions of the first decades of the
tenth/sixteenth century receded, began to clash with their teacher over the need
for more prominent leadership roles in the community.
Şaʿbân ultimately overcame these challenges by means of his connections
with key members of the learned hierarchy, both inside and outside of the order’s
ranks. In fact, what may have inspired the creation of this new branch of the
Halveti order tied to Şaʿbân’s legacy may not have been an impetus from Şaʿbân
himself, but instead the popular feeling that grew out of the funeral oratory
given by his friend Muharrem Efendi and the shared experience it provided for
the community. But Şaʿbân had laid the groundwork for these developments
in his own right. He demonstrated a willingness to act as a bridge between the
wealthier and poorer members of the community, in addition to assisting both
in difficult times. His support was especially strong among the shopkeeper
and mercantile class in Kastamonu, who relied on his spiritual protection in
their travels and business dealings in the wider region. Some of his successors
and contemporaries reference these connections in their narratives. The order
expanded as Şaʿbân’s followers found their support and recognition growing
in increasingly distant regions, perhaps through those who benefited from the
saint’s generosity or guidance themselves when they moved to different loca-
tions in the Ottoman realm. Finally, historians of gender should be intrigued that
although the narrative revolves heavily around the testimony and experiences
of Şaʿbân’s male followers, it also provides evidence that his female followers
played a role in contributing to his legacy.
That legacy also relied on a number of talented successors who were able
to build on the work that Şaʿbân initiated, though they had to transcend some
tensions of their own. In particular, the short-lived tenure of ʿOsmân Efendi
was a rocky start to the post-Şaʿbân era. Nevertheless, his successors Hayreddîn

Efendi, Abdülbâkî Efendi, and Muhyiddîn Efendi could rely on a durable
network that had spread over much of northern Anatolia to maintain and extend
the order’s influence during a period of Ottoman history otherwise characterized
by increasing socio-economic and political strains.
Şaʿbân’s successors are most notable for their diversity: an important reli-
gious scholar like Abdülbâkî was succeeded by Muhyiddîn, an impoverished
village shaykh living in a mountain cave, while a reformed religious ecstatic
like ʿOsmân Efendi was replaced by a former shopkeeper, Hayreddîn Efendi. If
anything, what the history of the order illustrates is that devotion to the order,
its membership, and its principles was the deciding factor in who would take up
leadership positions within it. From these stories, we gain insights on how Sufi
orders like the Şaʿbâniye evolved and functioned as an element in the Ottoman
civil society that had emerged by the time that Fuʾâdî and his contemporaries
came to reflect on the legacy they had inherited in the Menâkıb.
This is not to say that Fu’âdî’s hagiography is invariably a reliable source
for assessing the formative period of Şaʿbâniye history and its intersection with
the wider Ottoman context. It is especially striking that the hagiography occu-
pies itself with colorful but obscure local figures at the expense of what might
have been the order’s most high profile connections. Most notably, it tells us
nothing of the influence and contributions of Murad III’s court and the followers
of Şeyh Şücâʿ in İstanbul, which otherwise receive a great deal of attention in
other contemporary sources. In the end, as we have seen repeatedly, we cannot
bring the story of the Şaʿbâniye full circle until we fully confront the omnipres-
ent narrative voice of ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî. He took a prominent role in comment-
ing upon the events that he compiled from the oral traditions of his elders and
contemporaries. He also made no claim to being a neutral transmitter of the great
saint’s life; after all, by the time he produced his work, he was a shaykh himself.
His inclusion of “advisory notes” at every turn warns the historian seeking to
understand Şaʿbân’s life and times on its own terms that the creation of the work
marks an important turning point in the history of the Şaʿbâniye: its legacy was
in the process of written codification. Thus, it is to the life of ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî,
and his critical place in the chain of Şaʿbâniye shaykhs, that we must now turn in
order to better situate his work as a product of its own time and circumstances.
Notes
1 MSV, pp. 90–1.

2 MSV, p. 101; it is the introductory statement for the anecdotes in the fifth and final chapter
of MSV which describes Şaʿbân’s successors.
3 The two separate anecdotes occur in MSV, pp. 91–2.

4 Fuʾâdî refers to the scrambling that took place among the saint’s followers in the immedi-
ate vicinity of Kastamonu; see MSV, p. 93. Apparently, Şaʿbân died on a Wednesday,
meaning that his funeral was delayed by a day. Abdulkerim Abdülkadiroğlu questions
whether the burial might have been delayed purposely to take advantage of the more aus-
picious Muslim holy day of Friday, but admits he lacks evidence to confirm or deny this;
see AKAK, p. 44.
5 A reference to a well in the area of the sacred mosque at Mecca whose water supposedly
has curative and sacred powers.
6 MSV, p. 92.
7 MSV, p. 94.
8 The Tezkiretüʾl-Evliyâ is a hagiography written by Ferîdüddîn ʿAttâr (d. 618/1221) that
contains anecdotes about twenty-one figures from early Islamic history dating from the
second/eighth to the fourth/tenth century. Not all are primarily remembered as Sufis,
but are perhaps co-opted as such. For example, there are sections about Abu Hanîfa (d.
150/767) and Ahmad b. Hanbal (d. 240/855), founders of the Hanefî and Hanbalî schools
of Islamic law; see the remarks of Orhan Yavuz in FA, p. 38.
9 MSV, pp. 93–4.
10 MSV, pp. 94–5.
11 The anecdote to which Muharrem Efendi referred appears in abbreviated form in FA, p.
207.
12 Muharrem Efendi’s connections with the Bayrâmî order before he came to İstanbul to
take up his position at the Süleymaniye are discussed in NVA, p. 355.
13 MSV, pp. 95–6.
14 Fuʾâdî remarked that, “even [I who] at that time was a young boy, when I mention or think
of that state in the present, that state [of being] and intoxication come into my heart as if
that place [and time] were here now”; see MSV, p. 98.
15 Namely, the Kaʿba in Mecca and the Black Stone situated at one of its corners.
16 It is implied that the funeral proceedings all took place in the mosque of Seyyid Sünnetî
and the Halveti lodge close to it. However, this cannot explain the need for a procession;
the crowds flocking to the funeral proceedings and Muharrem Efendi’s speech may have
had to be accommodated in one of the larger mosques in the city center, or the ceremonial
prayer field (namâzgâh) lying just south of the center of the old town of Kastamonu. For
more information on the namâzgâh, which is now the site of the Gazi İlköğretim school,
see KKE, p. 115 with maps on pp. 231 and 396.
17 MSV, pp. 96–7.
18 MSV, pp. 92–3.
19 MSV, pp. 98–9. The specific mention of yogurt, a white food that conveys images of
purity and virtue in Ottoman culture, may be symbolically significant as well; see, for
instance, the remarks of Jane Hathaway, A Tale of Two Factions: Myth, Memory, and
Identity in Ottoman Egypt and Yemen (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press,
2003), pp. 108–9.
20 See Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural
History (New York: Basic Books, 1984), pp. 25–34.
21 Fuʾâdî neglected to explain the seeming contradiction with the earlier anecdote that
Şaʿbân’s death had sparked the onset of much rain, thunder and lightning! Compare
MSV, pp. 91–2.
22 MSV, pp. 99–100.

23 Drawn from al-Qurʾân, 57:29.
24 MSV, pp. 100–1; Fuʾâdî titles this final section, “an advisory note, by way of a conclusion
(lâyiha ʿalâʾl-vechüʾl-hâtime).”
25 According to the dates inscribed upon their tombs, Şaʿbân died on May 4 (18 Ziʾl-kaʿde),
and ʿOsmân Efendi died almost exactly forty days later on June 14 (28 Ziʾl-hicce) of
the year 1569. This does not tally properly with accounts in MSV, however, as the
account states that ʿOsmân did not arrive until after Şaʿbân had been buried on May 6.
According to the text, when he did arrive, he performed the forty-day retreat, only to die
on the fortieth day as he was completing the ritual practice of the erbaʿîn, thus the May
4 to June 14 period cannot be possible. Either Fuʾâdî failed to reconcile his accounts
properly, or the tomb dates represent over-simplified calculations made by their carvers,
who estimated the dates without picking up on the nuances of ʿOsmân Efendi’s delayed
arrival; compare descriptions of the tomb markers in ZD inserted between pp. 18–19
with the text of MSV, pp. 103–4. Another explanation may lie in hagiographical license,
which may have sought to relate ʿOsmân Efendi’s death to the example of the Prophet
Muhammad and his daughter Fatima, who also died at the end of a prescribed forty-day
mourning period.
26 MSV, pp. 103–4.
27 MSV, pp. 101–2.
28 This is the implication of the narrative given about the delayed submission of Sinâneddîn
to his father’s guidance in LH, fol. 233a–b (483–4).
29 This term refers to someone who is in a position of power and authority by right of birth.
30 MSV, pp. 102–3.
31 MSV, p. 104; one should also not forget that Hızır also played a role in forging the link of
succession between Seyyid Sünnetî and Şaʿbân Efendi.
32 MSV, p. 106.
33 MSV, p. 107.
34 The mosque to which İlyâs refers is clearly the Yakup Ağa mosque and soup kitchen
complex, which was built during Selim I’s reign and developed further during the latter
half of the 1540s. A prime source of the revenue for the upkeep of the mosque and soup
kitchen came from the stores of the iron-workers from the area of Hisârardı, implying that
Şaʿbân’s following had connections to this area; see KKE, pp. 104–5 and 125.
35 MSV, pp. 107–8. It is not fully clear to me how the “forty” described here fits into Ibn
al-ʿArabî’s teaching, although they resemble the category of mudabbirûn described in
SOTS, pp. 112–14, who had similar properties to the individual described. Oğuz, on the
other hand, would have defined the individual as one of the nukabâʾ; see MİO, p. 47.
36 MSV, p. 108.
37 For example, we know from the date included with a chronogram placed over the front
entrance to the renovated Seyyid Sünnetî mosque near the Şaʿbâniye lodge complex that
Şeyh Şücâʿ initiated the first renovation of the mosque sometime between 1574 and 1580;
one source claims 1576, see the reproduction of the inscription in ZD inserted between pp.
18–19. Another scholar concurs with this reading, but suggests that ebced in the inscrip-
tion add up to 1574; see AKAK, p. 113. Another source claims the date on the inscription
to be 1580; see KKE, p. 107.
38 MSV, p. 114; Fu’âdî used the term sıla, implying an extended visit to one’s friends and
family in one’s place of birth.
39 For a study of the evkaf that Ebûsuʿûd endowed, see Ali Kılcı, “İskilipteki Vakıflar ve

Ebusuud Efendi,” in Mevlüt Uyanık (ed.), Türk Kültüründe İz Bırakan İskilipli Âlimler
(Ankara: Türk Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları, 1998), pp. 77–107, esp. the chart listing the
endowments on p. 103.
40 On Ebûsuʿûd’s birthplace and his expressed hometown identity, see Hamdi Döndüren,
“Bir Fakih Olarak Ebusuud,” in Mevlüt Uyanık (ed.), Türk Kültüründe İz Bırakan İskilipli
Âlimler (Ankara: Türk Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları, 1998), p. 258; on Ebûsuʿûd’s father,
Şeyh Yavşî of İskilip, see Mustafa Aşkar, “Şeyh Muhyiddin Muhammed b. Mustafa
el-İskilibi (Şeyh Yavşi): Hayatı, Eserleri ve Varidat Şerhi Adlı Eseri Üzerine,” Türk
Kültüründe İz Bırakan İskilipli Âlimler, pp. 193–214.
41 See the notations on the TAVO map of Jens Peter Laut, “Kleinasien im 17. Jahrhundert
nach Evliya Çelebi (Westteil und Ostteil),” Tubinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients
(Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 1992), map #B IX 6, and the corresponding
description found in Korkut M. Buğday (ed.), Evliyâ Çelebis Anatolienreise aus dem
dritten Band des Seyâhatnâme: Edition, Übersetzung und Kommentar (Leiden: E. J. Brill,
1996), pp. 282–6.
42 MSV, pp. 108–9.
43 MSV, p. 108; although it is not certain whether Şaʿbân’s demand for a full submission
from a dervish of Sünbül Efendi actually reflects what could be termed “bad relations,”
Sünbül Efendi’s followers and successors may not have appreciated Şaʿbân’s implicit
claim to superiority. As for Fuʾâdî, he had at least indirect knowledge of Necmeddîn
Hasan, describing him as being “a scholar and a knower of the exoteric and esoteric mean-
ings and secrets of the four books.” This corresponds with other hagiographical descrip-
tions of Necmeddîn as being well versed in the four sacred texts: the Qurʾan, the Torah,
the Gospels (İncîl), and the Psalms (Zebûr); see LH, fol. 235b (491).
44 MSV, pp. 109–10.
45 MSV, p. 109; the story also appears during Fuʾâdî’s description of some of Şaʿbân’s more
prominent followers on p. 63.
46 Some confusion might be caused by the existence of two figures named Bâlî Efendi
among the Halveti shaykhs of the time, one of them being Sofyalı Bâlî Efendi and the
other Sarhoş Bâlî Efendi (d. 980/1573). Based on the chronology of Abdülbâkî’s life,
the latter might seem a more natural fit. However, the element of tension in the narra-
tive points more strongly to Sofyalı Bâlî. For more on the two shaykhs, see RÖ-OT, pp.
45–8; both traced their silsiles back to Kasım Çelebi (d. 924/1518), another successor to
Cemâl el-Halvetî. If correct, this information also allows to us to effectively estimate the
comparatively early date (before 1553) when Abdülbâkî came and pledged allegiance to
Şaʿbân, meaning that when he acceded to leadership of the order, he had been part of it
for two and a half decades.
47 Abdülbâkî literally means in Arabic, “servant of the Everlasting,” with the “Everlasting”
being one of the ninety-nine names of God.
48 MSV, p. 111.
49 For a brief overview of Sofyalı Bâlî Efendi’s activities and career, see NC, pp. 70–81,
who views him as one of the pivotal Balkan Halveti figures of the tenth/sixteenth century.
50 NC, pp. 81–90; Muslihuddin reportedly established connections with the grand vizier
Sokullu Mehmed Paşa and his wife, who built a lodge for him and his followers in the
capital. He also had good relations with the şeyhülislâm Ebûsuʿûd, and was criticized by
some for these relationships; see CF-MA, pp. 57–58. Ocak notes that Muslihuddin also
continued the hard line of his master on questions of heresy, and that he condemned the

Vâridat of Şeyh Bedreddîn, a ninth/fifteenth-century shaykh executed for heresy. This
placed him in opposition to many prominent scholars; see ZVM, p. 188.
51 MSV, pp. 111–12.
52 These technical terms refer to being in the sixth and seventh stages of the Halveti path,
which are also referred to as cemʿüʾl-cemʿ and ehadiyyetüʾl-cemʿ in some sources. The
term fark-ı sânî refers to the process whereby the soul of a Sufi returns from the world of
the unseen to the corporeal world to benefit others; see JST, p. 157 and MİO, p. 26.
53 MSV, pp. 112–13.
54 It can be inferred that Şeyh Şücâʿ and Abdülbâkî Efendi were at least aware of each
other, even if they were not personally acquainted. This is because we have evidence
for the vakıf that was established by Şücâʿ for the upkeep of the mosque that he would
have renamed in his honor. In it, he stipulates the income that is to be given to Abdülbâkî
Efendi as head of the order there, which seems to be a daily salary of five akçe and two
dirhems; see the copy of the foundation deed in MBEH, p. 156.
55 MSV, p. 113; frustratingly, we have no further information on Elmâcızâde Muhyiddîn, so
a more specific tracking of the growth of the order is impossible.
56 AKAK, p. 59.
57 MSV, p. 117.
58 Küre-i Hadîd was attached to the kazâ of Araç, and was home to an ancient mosque that
was built some time during the first half of the eighth/fourteenth century by İsmâʿîl Bey
İsfendiyâr; see MBEH, p. 65.
59 Since the treatise’s contents are written in Turkish, and include translations of Arabic
sources like hadith, I assume that Turkish was the original language of transmission.
However, it is not impossible that later copyists took the step of translating it from an all
Arabic treatise.
60 The manuscript has several corruptions that make interpreting this part of the sentence
difficult and makes the subject of the sentence unclear. It is not certain whether or not
the introduction represents the voice of Muhyiddîn Efendi, some other transmitter, or
Mahmûd Efendi himself.
61 RTAJ, fol. 16b.
62 Seyyid Seyfullah was himself the descendant of a Sufi shaykh, Seyyid Nizâmeddîn b.
Şihâbuddîn (d. 957/1550), who fled from Baghdad before the Safavid advance and came
to İstanbul in the time of Sultan Selim I. The first chapter of one of his works included
several short hagiographical entries on a number of the prominent Halveti shaykhs of
İstanbul, suggesting that he eventually became affiliated with them in some way even if
he was not a fully-fledged member of the order; see CAMA, fols 2b–16b.
63 Seyyid Seyfullah Kâzım b. Nizâmuddîn b. Seyyid Şihâbuddîn Bağdâdî (d. 1009/1601),
Risâle-i Tâcnâme, Atatürk Kitaplığı, İstanbul, MS Osman Ergin 1619/3, fols 200b–1a. It
should be noted here that twelve seams could suggest an allusion to the twelve imams of
Shiʿite provenance; an Ottoman Sunnî order like Seyfullah’s may have found it wise to
avoid the allusion.
64 For a good example of this phenomenon, see the court case of a female teacher, Haciye
Sabah, as noted by Leslie Peirce in her study of Aintab’s court records. Haciye Sabah was
accused by members of her community of having Safavid sympathies, perhaps because of
her origins, even though most of her activities seemed more representative of typical Sufi
activities; see Peirce, Morality Tales, pp. 253–75.
65 Seyyid Seyfullah Kâzım, Risâle-i Tâcnâme, fols 201a–4a; though we should note a

critical difference between these two branches of the order, as Seyyid Seyfullah’s branch
wore a cap with fourteen seams rather than the dâl cap (headgear shaped like the Arabic
letter dâl) favored by Mahmûd Efendi and the Şaʿbâniye, underscoring the divergences
between different Halveti sub-branches. Thus, the symbolism in Seyfullah’s tract dif-
fered somewhat from Mahmûd’s despite sharing some components. Some of Seyfullah’s
detractors, in fact, cited the lack of a dâl cap as a cause for criticism, see fol. 201a.
66 See OF-RV; the introduction runs from fols 22a–36a, and Fuʾâdî cites Mahmûd’s letter as
part of his argument on fol. 28a–b.
67 For more on the history and practices of the Zeyniye order, see RÖ-Z.
68 RTAJ, fol. 17a–b.
69 RTAJ, fol. 20b.
70 RTAJ, fol. 19b.
71 RTAJ, fols 17b–18a.
72 MSV, pp. 117–18; in the extended silsile of the Şaʿbâniye branch given by Muhammed
Oğuz, the connection between Mahmûd Efendi and Muhyiddîn Efendi does not appear;
see MİO, p. 202.
73 MSV, pp. 118–19.
74 MSV, p. 119.
75 The most widely accepted stories surrounding the first revelation to the Prophet
Muhammad state that he frequently meditated in a cave on the mountain of Hirâ’ outside
Mecca, where he eventually received the first revelation from Gabriel; for interpreta-
tions of this event see Maxime Rodinson, Muhammad, trans. Anne Carter (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1971), pp. 69–75; W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad: Prophet and
Statesman (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), pp. 14–22; and the analysis in URB,
pp. 103–8.
76 MSV, p. 119.
77 We do not know if the more extensive and lost text has additional details; in any case,
it is implied in the abridgment that the longer Arabic text of the hagiography was kept
in the lodge in a single copy under the watch of the order’s leadership. Its contents were
revealed only to those who were given permission, or that the text would be transmitted
in oral translation into Turkish for those seeking its contents.
78 MSV, p. 121.
79 MSV, pp. 121–2.
80 The text refers to the name of the town where Mustafa Dede was living as “Borlû” or
“Bûrlû,” but most assume that Bolu is the town that is meant; see AKAK, pp. 61–2.
81 MSV, pp. 122–3.
82 LH, fol. 205a–b (420–1).
83 MSV, p. 124.
84 MSV, p. 123.
85 For a summary of the rebellions and disruptions of the Anatolian heartland between 1595
and 1610, see CI, pp. 72–6.
86 MSV, pp. 124–5.

PART III
. . .
DEFENDING THE CULT
OF SAINTS IN ELEVENTH/
SEVENTEENTH-
CENTURY KASTAMONU:
TRANSFORMING THE
.
ŞAʿBÂNI YE ORDER UNDER
ʿÖMER EL- FUʾÂDÎ

INTRODUCTION
The descriptions of the Halveti saint Şaʿbân-ı Veli and his successors have demon-
strated how sub-branches of the order replicated and spread in provincial settings
like Kastamonu. Yet the previous chapters have also illustrated how our knowledge
of this process came to be mediated by the work of later biographers or hagiogra-
phers. In the case of ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî, this extended beyond preserving edifying
anecdotes about his predecessors to encompass a broader agenda. The final section
of this book is devoted to increasing our understanding of the extraordinary nature
of this individual, who evolved into an unsung hero of the Şaʿbâniye sub-branch.
The following chapters argue that the critical turning point in the history of
the Şaʿbâniye order did not occur with the activities of its founder, Şaʿbân-ı Veli,
in the mid-tenth/sixteenth century, the consolidation activities of his successors,
or even the order’s later ascent to greater power and social visibility in the elev-
enth/seventeenth century in İstanbul. Instead, the comparatively obscure fifth
successor to Şaʿbân-ı Veli, ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî (d. 1045/1636), who began his life’s
work a generation after Şaʿbân’s death, emerged as the pivotal figure. By virtue
of his codification of an account through which the foundations of the order
would come to be interpreted, no historian should ignore Fuʾâdî’s imprint upon
the transmission of this legacy. Yet oddly enough, most who have addressed the
order have focused their attention primarily on Şaʿbân, with only a cursory nod
to Fuʾâdî’s contributions.
What truly established the Şaʿbâniye as a formidable force in the social,
intellectual, and political context of the turbulent eleventh/seventeenth century
was Fuʾâdî’s feverish activity, of which the Menâkıb-ı Şaʿbân-ı Veli is but a
single part. This section will expand our source base to encompass not only
additional materials found in the Menâkıb, but also a supplemental tract added
197

to the Menâkıb a decade later called the Türbenâme (“Tract on the Tomb”).1
Furthermore, Fuʾâdî’s legacy extended far beyond these foundational works.
He was a prolific writer who wrote a number of tracts of various lengths dealing
with aspects of the Halveti path and Sufism. These works served to both educate
the followers of the Şaʿbâniye and clearly define the philosophical and religious
underpinnings of the order’s traditions. Despite his provincial background, he
was remarkably successful in defending his order from growing threats to the
legitimacy of the Ottoman Halveti.
Fu’âdî would be the first leader of the order who had not been trained directly
by Şaʿbân himself. To better understand the important role that he played in
transforming the Şaʿbâniye in order to successfully confront new challenges
that paralleled events in the wider Ottoman Empire, we must examine both the
process of his initiation into Şaʿbâniye and his thirty-two-year career as Şaʿbân’s
successor. In Chapter 6, we examine autobiographical elements in Fuʾâdî’s work
that discuss his early life and the process by which he came to undertake the
writing of the Menâkıb-ı Şaʿbân-ı Veli. Chapter 7 extends this narrative further
by showing how the construction of the tomb complex for Şaʿbân-ı Veli further
consolidated Fuʾâdî’s initial successes in stabilizing the order and winning
legitimacy for himself and its following. In addition to serving as a sacred space
for Şaʿbân’s future blessings, it also founded a library of didactic literature that
included Fuʾâdî’s works and established him as one of the premiere provincial
Sufi leaders of his era. The section concludes with an assessment of Fuʾâdî’s
broader legacy in the political, social, and religious milieu of his era in Chapter
8. This includes a discussion of Fuʾâdî’s struggles with the political current that
would later come to be described as the Kâdızâdeli movement (suggesting, in
the process, that “Kâdızâdeli” may be a problematic term for describing elev-
enth/seventeenth-century Ottoman puritanical politico-religious movements). It
also offers reflections on how Fuʾâdî’s presentation of Şaʿbân-ı Veli as a high-
ranking Ottoman saint demanded that his contemporaries re-evaluate the very
concept of sainthood itself, and why he proved to be so successful in overcoming
mounting obstacles that blocked the development of other sub-branches of the
Halveti order later in the century.
Note
1 This text makes up the final third of the thirteenth/nineteenth-century printed text of the
hagiography, thus its title; see MSV, pp. 130–88. To distinguish the two parts of the printed
text from each other, I continue the convention of referring to the Menâkıb section of the
work as MSV, while distinguishing the elements in the subsequently added treatise in the
final third of the work as MSV (T).

Chapter
ʿÖmer el- Fuʾâdî as Sufi Aspirant and

.
Hagiographer: the Road to Şaʿbâni ye
Succession
ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî would likely have been a transitional figure in the history of the
Şaʿbâniye whether he accepted the role or not. His accession to the successor-
ship represented the de facto end of an era, for he held the distinction of being
the first head of the Şaʿbâniye too young to have been trained in the Sufi path by
Şaʿbân himself. This did not mean that he was entirely cut off from the founder,
having known him as a child. He would, however, have been aware that Şaʿbân
had predeceased the vast majority of Kastamonu’s population by the time he
came to power.
Fu’âdî was born some time in the year 967/1560 by his own account. He
met Şaʿbân Efendi through the agency of his mother and father when he was a
youth, and witnessed the events of Şaʿbân’s funeral in the spring of 978/1569
at the age of nine. Still, his youth meant that he never had the chance to build a
meaningful personal relationship with this towering figure, who by the beginning
of the eleventh/seventeenth century had become increasingly remote from living
memory. Fuʾâdî, despite some initial awkwardness, would eventually rise to the
challenges raised by growing chronological distance and revive Şaʿbân-ı Veli’s
memory for future generations.
ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî’s Early Life and Involvement with the

.
Şaʿbâni ye to 1012/1604
Our knowledge about ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî comes almost entirely from his own
hand. Occasional references to him turn up in other sources, but these are often
brief or lacking in familiarity with the basic circumstances of his life and times.1
Some scholars have suggested that Fuʾâdî’s father, a man named Himmet Dede,
199

was one of Şaʿbân’s followers who lived close to where the present day Mûsâ
Fâkih mosque is located in Kastamonu, just to the east of the present Şaʿbân-ı
Veli complex in the Hisârardı district.2 Yet the only thing that can be confirmed
is that the Şaʿbâniye order played some role in shaping his childhood; outside
of that, we gain no insight on how his family members responded to the passing
of the great saint or even how long they survived Şaʿbân himself. Based on his
writings, we can assume that he studied in the local medreses and learned Arabic
and Persian; initially, he sought to acquire a salaried position as a part of the
local scholarly hierarchy in Kastamonu.3 His self-description, however, dem-
onstrates the standard Sufi model of experiencing spiritual crisis over the value
of his attempts to master exoteric religious knowledge. Ultimately, he withdrew
from both the company of his peers and the pursuit of his worldly goals. His
autobiographical account is included in the section of the Menâkıb devoted to his
first spiritual guide, Abdülbâkî, and sheds light on how he came to the Sufi path:
This poor one, being among the people of Kastamonu, became a seeker of exo-
teric knowledge, and acquired an education in the rational and transmitted sci-
ences with the desire for high-ranking positions which were given from the royal
threshold, frequent in dismissal and notorious for [sudden] turnover. I had no
urge or inclination toward esoteric and divinely inspired knowledge which was
obtained and perfected from the world of the heart and the station of the soul.
With the will and guidance of God, by purity and relaxation coming to a neglect-
ful heart, and cleansing and a new beginning coming to a soul capable of spiritual
enlightenment through the power of exoteric knowledge, a divine attraction
manifested itself. According to the meaning of [the Arabic proverb] “a rapture
among the raptures of the Merciful is equal to the work of [both] men and jinn,”
I was overpowered by renunciation and annihilation and rejecting multiplicity
through withdrawal and solitude. For a long time I remained in my own state, and
like Küreli Mehmed Çelebi and Abdülbâkî Efendi [who were] mentioned in the
anecdotes of Şaʿbân Efendi, I examined closely the books of both the religious
law and the [Sufi] path. My doubts and problems pertaining to the divine mani-
festations and the divinely inspired knowledge were not resolved through a book
or a tract. In the end, I came to know definitively by every method that I would
not solve my problem or be satisfied until I undertook service to a perfected guide
and a knowledgeable shaykh. When I had to seek out a guide, I wanted to follow
Abdülbâkî Efendi, thinking that he who is a shaykh on the prayer-rug of Şaʿbân
Efendi must certainly be a perfected guide!4
Fuʾâdî’s account follows a standard script that could have been plucked from
any number of founding figures in the Halveti order, but a few elements do offer

ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî as Sufi Aspirant and Hagiographer 201
clues about him as an individual. First, the knowledge that Kastamonu had pro-
duced successful scholarly figures was one reason he set out on that career path.
But he also recognized one of the crises that came to beset the Ottoman Empire
after the tenth/sixteenth century, namely, the patterns of unstable series of rapid
appointments and dismissals from governmental positions, revolving around the
whim of politics at the royal court, that increasingly marked scholarly careers.
Even prominent figures like Gelibolulu Mustafa ʿAlî were unsuccessful in navi-
gating the shaky state of the Ottoman system’s traditional career paths at this
time. Interestingly, Mustafa ʿAlî’s work also reflects periodic turns to Sufism
and worldly renunciation as a response to his failures to obtain prestigious posts.5
Nevertheless, other elements in the text demonstrate that Fuʾâdî was not
entirely unsuccessful in his endeavors. He remarks elsewhere that he secured
fairly stable employment at a comparatively young age (perhaps as early as
983/1575, if we accept his own recollection) as an assistant to the müfti of
Kastamonu. Thus, his studies in the exoteric aspects of knowledge and Islamic
jurisprudence must have paid off to some extent.6 In addition, as a result of his
pledging his allegiance to Abdülbâkî Efendi several years before his death,
Fuʾâdî also served as the preacher of the Friday sermon at the mosque of Şaʿbân-ı
Veli. While the Şaʿbâniye were never fully absent from Fuʾâdî’s consciousness
during his youth, those links did not conflict with scholarly achievements at the
provincial level.
We know that Fuʾâdî first entered the order as a dedicated Sufi aspirant
sometime in 994/1586, based on an assertion he made that he made his pledge
of allegiance to Abdülbâkî Efendi as his guide at the age of twenty-seven.7 Yet
when he first decided to consult with Abdülbâkî Efendi, Fuʾâdî was disappointed
to find that his chosen mentor-to-be was staying in İskilip rather than Kastamonu.
Impatient to commence his progress on the Sufi path, he decided to consult some
of Şaʿbân’s other successors in the area, only to be rebuffed:
My fervor’s being much increased, I couldn’t be patient and I made an explana-

tion of the state [of affairs] to Hacı Dede, who was well known among the suc-
cessors of Şaʿbân Efendi. He said, “this problem is not that which is known or
solved in a speedy manner, which are marks of rapture. It takes time and gradual
advancement. If you set out on the path by renouncing all but God, a solution
will occur through struggle and step-by-step progress.” But I was not able to
delay on account of my restlessness, and he shrugged helplessly, saying, “he
who will seek guidance in a hurry, we cannot guide [him] quickly.” After that,
I explained the state to Himmet Efendi, famed for perfection and exalted favor
among the successors of Nûreddînzâde.8 He also responded in exactly the same
way. He said, “don’t suffer and be uncomfortable; these problems are signs of

ecstasy and a cause of the appearance of the manifestations [of God], and its
end will be blessing and perfection of mystical knowledge.” I came to Mahmûd
Efendi, in the hearth of Benli Sultan on İlgâz mountain, [Benli’s] son and rep-
resentative, and he also sent the inconsolable [Fuʾâdî] away to his station of
hopelessness.9
This information is critical in describing how Fuʾâdî had a range of potential

Halveti devotees to choose from – it was not Abdülbâkî, but other successors
of Şaʿbân who were operating in Kastamonu. This could be explained either by
reliance on the rule that Kastamonu had grown large enough to justify a second
successor’s presence (assuming continued obedience to the rule Şaʿbân had pre-
viously imposed), or simply because Abdülbâkî himself was not frequently in
residence at the lodge because he had based himself in İskilip. Moreover, other
successors from more powerful, İstanbul-based sub-branches of the Halveti
order had moved into the area in the form of the descendants of Sofyalı Bâlî
Efendi via his successor Nûreddînzâde Muslihuddîn – noting that Sofyalı Bâlî
had once attracted the interest of Abdülbâkî Efendi himself. In addition, we
also learn that the longstanding menzilhâne of Benli Sultan on İlgâz mountain
was still functioning under the direction of his son, Mahmûd Efendi. The young
Fuʾâdî had options in pursuing his Sufi inclinations, and despite his inability to
build close relationships with these figures, interaction with them may have con-
tributed something to his later writings.
Fuʾâdî carefully avoids any discussion of Abdülbâkî’s acts of grace out
of respect for his command, as we have seen. What Fuʾâdî does do, in part to
side-step this prohibition, is to use his own assimilation into the Şaʿbâniye as a
means of indirectly illustrating his first master’s spiritual powers. Fuʾâdî must
have waited some time for Abdülbâkî to return to Kastamonu, for he claims that
he was wrapped up in his own problems and did not immediately come to see
Abdülbâkî even when he had arrived. Eventually, he did come to the mosque for
Friday prayer and he was able to listen to Abdülbâkî’s address to the congrega-
tion. Abdülbâkî’s sermon immediately resolved several of Fuʾâdî’s most vexing
intellectual problems, so he approached the master afterwards and expressed
his desire to serve. In so doing, the narrative contrasts the hesitation and reti-
cence displayed by the other shaykhs with whom Fuʾâdî had consulted with the
immediate acceptance he received from Abdülbâkî, culminating in the following
observations: “If I had not come to a perfected guide . . . like him, I would have
been diverted by divine rapture, remained in the form of madness and in the
station of ecstatic unity (makâm-ı cemʿ), and been blocked from coming to the
second distinction (fark-ı sânî) and the unity of the unity (cemʿüʾl-cemʿ) which
is the station of guidance.”10 In sum, the obvious point that Fuʾâdî had risen to

the head of the order, and become a perfected guide in his own right was one of
the acts of grace that his master bestowed. Fuʾâdî could employ this to proffer
his own experience as a proof of his master’s sainthood, if not buttress his own
legitimacy in the process.
Fuʾâdî’s experiences, however, underscore the degree to which the Şaʿbâniye
infrastructure remained unstable in the post-Şaʿbân era, as his success in trans-
forming his spiritual life was only temporary. Fuʾâdî was silent on whether he
was required to follow Abdülbâkî to places outside Kastamonu, or if Abdülbâkî’s
return to Kastamonu was part of a lengthy stay. Regardless, Abdülbâkî would die
three years after he had accepted Fuʾâdî as his follower, before Fuʾâdî was able
to complete the seven stages of the Halveti path. He thus lacked the ability to
chart his own course as a successor. Since the succession to Muhyiddîn was not
immediate in character, Fuʾâdî did not continue his efforts and even temporarily
abandoned the Sufi path altogether, apparently returning to his previous duties.
He reflected that the issues that led him back to the order were tied to a broad-
based fear among many Ottoman subjects over a lack of stability which charac-
terized the late tenth/sixteenth-century environment:
[I] was a follower of Abdülbâkî Efendi, and I struggled more than three years
in the world of isolation and solitude. I reached the divine solitude (vahdet-i
hakîkiye) through the power of the station of unity (makâm-ı cemʿ) in spiritual
unveiling. While [I was] withdrawn and in isolation, the signs and manifestations
of the unity of the unity (cemʿüʾl-cemʿ) appeared. [Then] I fell into the world
of apparent plurality (kesret-i sûriye) through witnessing of the state of solitude
in the multitude11 and the second distinction (fark-ı sânî).12 I was in the scribal
service through knowledge of jurisprudence at the müfti’s office for 17 years in
Kastamonu, and in the office of preacher in the Şaʿbân Efendi mosque. After that
I learned of the perfection and states of Muhyiddîn Efendi. On account of the
appearance of increased disorder and weakness when it reached the year 1000 in
our time, and its being most important and best to be in the world of solitude in a
period of weakness like this, by the manifest and hidden appearing in the mirror
of the heart, the state of annihilation became ascendant again in the world of the
heart and soul, and the years of divine ecstasy again came suddenly to the ocean
of the heart. It brought into motion the waves of divine love which were in my
depths and the boats of the spiritual states and divine manifestations, and embrac-
ing it, I fell voluntarily once more into the channel of hope of travelling the path
and progression in spiritual knowledge.13
Like many other Ottoman Muslims, Fuʾâdî was deeply affected by the fears sur-
rounding the advent of the Muslim millennium toward the end of Sultan Murad

III’s reign. This, coupled with the general instability of state positions, proved to
be the catalyst that drew him back onto the Sufi path.
The Ottoman war with the Safavids that ended in 999/1590 had led to disrup-
tion and financial strain on the empire, causing an upsurge in brigandage and
other problems. The internal political situation worsened over the course of the
decade, with multiple revolts threatening the sultan’s control.14 The stress of
trying to function in an increasingly unstable environment may have led Fuʾâdî
to seek out the support that the Halveti order could provide. Also, at some point
Muhyiddîn would have secured sufficient support for his succession, and the
conjunction of factors would solidify Fuʾâdî’s commitment to the Şaʿbâniye
once more. His new guide, Muhyiddîn Efendi, soon took a liking to Fuʾâdî
and predicted, on the second day of a traditional forty-day spiritual retreat,
that Fuʾâdî would gain mastery over the sixth stage from a dream vision. This
advance would release him from his previous frustration. With Muhyiddîn’s
continued guidance, Fuʾâdî then gained access to the seventh and final stage,
giving him the right to guide others.15
Yet Fuʾâdî’s career differed significantly in a key respect from those of his
predecessors. While all the other direct successors to Şaʿbân had all been sent out
to guide in other places, there is no indication that Fuʾâdî ever left Kastamonu
during the period between the completion of his training on the path and his
accession to the leadership of the order in 1012/1604. Instead, we must assume
that he continued his duties as a scribe for Kastamonu’s müfti and preaching at
the Şaʿbân-ı Veli mosque on Fridays. The reason for this may have been grimly
practical: from 1004/1596 to 1018/1610 Anatolia was racked by the Celâlî
revolts, first under the renegade, Kara Yazıcı, and later others. Much of the coun-
tryside was plundered, and roads were frequently unsafe to travel as marauding
bands roamed the area of Kastamonu and other towns.16 Muhyiddîn may have
lacked the ability to send Fuʾâdî too far afield to spread the order by the time he
reached maturity. He may have also valued his activities and connections with
Kastamonu’s scholarly institutions too much to lose him.
The chaos of the period probably forced Muhyiddîn to conserve resources
and focus on maintaining the order’s following as best he could. Fuʾâdî corrobo-
rates this interpretation by noting that some of his aims for the development of
the order went unfulfilled during his lifetime. This led Fuʾâdî to make vows to
fulfill his shaykh’s vision. This is exemplified in a conversation with his teacher
one day, while he was in the process of completing his Sufi training. In a section
he labels “a story” (hikâyet), Muhyiddîn confided in him:
When [Muhyiddîn] said: “I have three wishes in the world. If God most High
were to satisfy those wishes, I would die, and if I were to pass on [to the

afterlife], death would be a favor to my soul,” the poor one [Fuʾâdî] requested
an explanation. He said, “the first is that the pulpit in the noble mosque is [too]
long. It constrains the circle of the remembrance of God, and it is an obstacle
to the zeal of those performing the zikr. [The second is that] two pillars in the
mosque also block and cause difficulty in this manner. [The first two wishes] are
to make the administrator [of the mosque] shorten the pulpit and to take out the
pillars.” He was silent and did not explain his third wish. When I asked him for
an explanation about his third wish, he said, “since it is confidential (mahremleri
olmağla),17 if it [can be kept as] a secret informal revelation, and if my dream
becomes reality independently by the grace of God, then if it were to appear in
my time that an exalted tomb is built over the lord Şaʿbân Efendi, and if I were
to cover the enlightened sepulcher with a wool [covering], and if I were to wrap
his black turban [on it], then I would have achieved my final wish.” Several
years later, his blessed soul passed on to the place of the mercy of God, and his
body was moved to the area of the sepulcher of the lord [Şaʿbân]. The poor one
was guided to the service of the order in its lodge and the guidance of mystical
knowledge on its prayer-rug by the command of God, and while participating in
the circle of the remembrance of God, the three wishes of the noble one came
to my mind.18
Fuʾâdî reveals several important things here. First, Muhyiddîn Efendi was not in
charge of the mosque during the years of his guidance. Muhyiddîn’s reference
to a need for permission from an administrator implies that the mosque at the
Şaʿbân-ı Veli complex came under the control of Şaʿbâniye leaders only after
Fuʾâdî’s accession to power. This was despite the fact that Şaʿbân and his fol-
lowers had worked to convert it into a congregational mosque from the simple
mescid, or mosque built for daily prayer, founded by Seyyid Sünnetî. It is not
clear what the circumstances of the mosque were; perhaps Şaʿbân and his fol-
lowers never gained official control over the structure. Thus, the fact that the
mosque was poorly designed to accommodate traditional Halveti practices sug-
gested that Şaʿbân’s impact was still limited, and the lack of space may reflect
later participatory growth in the Şaʿbâniye ceremonies.
However, another likely explanation exists, and may rest with the mosque’s
renovation and its reclassification as vakıf, negotiated with imperial interven-
tion during the reign of Sultan Murad III at the instigation of Şeyh Şücâʿ. As
a result of this, its subsequent administrative personnel would likely have
been appointed by the whim of high officials as part of the Ottoman patron-
age structure.19 Muhyiddîn’s failure to gain any position in its administration
may have reflected problems with the circumstances of his succession, or were
perhaps even inherited from Abdülbâkî’s absence. When Fuʾâdî consolidated his

leadership, one of his goals must have been to attain more substantial influence
over its physical infrastructure.
There are other clues as to why Muhyiddîn might have had trouble carrying
out his wish to build a tomb, or even express it publicly. Early in the reign of
Sultan Mehmed III (1595–1603), the şeyhülislâm Saʿdeddîn (d. 1008/1599) was
asked to issue a legal judgment (fetvâ) defending the practice of visitation at the
tombs of Muslim saints. Saʿdeddîn had strong connections with Sultan Murad
III, having become attached to his retinue even before Murad’s accession to the
throne in 982/1574. Therefore, he was well disposed toward most Sufi prac-
tices.20 In both the Menâkıb-ı Şaʿbân and the Türbenâme, Fuʾâdî references this
fetvâ as a defense against the anti-Sufi factions that harassed the Şaʿbâniye over
the course of his career. When introducing the legal opinion, he described the
kind of trouble the order was facing with regard to constructing Şaʿbân’s tomb:
Some of the people of vanity and conceit – [those] slow of understanding, igno-
rant ones posing as wise people, and uneducated people who follow the urging of
Satan and the demands of the carnal soul from among the exoteric scholars and
others – censure the visiting of the enlightened sepulchers for assistance and the
assistance of the esteemed saints and noble shaykhs of the Sunnî tradition who
manifest sainthood and acts of grace from their good souls, on account of [their]
not knowing anything. They say, “they are created beings like us also, and they
were people of faith and trustworthy people. But it is not decreed in our sect
that they die as believers [automatically]. They will also say, ‘my soul, my soul’
on the day of judgment like us; there is no benefit for anyone from them in this
world. And it is not suitable to visit to seek help from their tombs. It is necessary
to seek help and assistance from God Most High himself alone. It is polytheism
to seek help from any other,” and they say many other things like this.21
Şaʿbân had encountered these problems too, but by Fuʾâdî’s time the greatest
threat to the order’s legitimacy came not from groups composed of upstart or
wayward Şaʿbâniye dervishes or ornery individual scholars like Evliyâ Şücâʿ.
Instead, Fuʾâdî implies the appearance of organized groups that challenged the
doctrinal bases of Sufi practice itself. These groups were forerunners to what
later came to be called the Kâdızâdeli movement, a faction that would come to
dominate Ottoman religio-political conflicts during the eleventh/seventeenth
century.22
Despite Fuʾâdî’s hostility, we discern that the challengers of tomb visitation
legitimacy based their arguments on a concept positing radical equality among
all Muslims in their relationship to God. This allowed no one to act as an inter-
mediary or intercessor with the divinity for their co-religionists. This idea, which

is not without scriptural justification in the Qurʾan,23 threatened one of the foun-
dations of Ottoman Sufism. Fuʾâdî and others knew that any failure to respond
to this assault on the practices of his order would mean trouble in an increas-
ingly hostile environment. By issuing his opinion, Saʿdeddîn gave Ottoman Sufi
leaders a precedent that allowed them to invoke state authority and tradition
against their opponents; a weapon that would be revived in later generations to
oppose anti-Sufi attacks.24 With praise for both Sultan Murad III and Mehmed
III as prominent supporters of mysticism, Fuʾâdî incorporated the full text of the
legal opinion in Turkish. In response to the question, “if Zeyd, who is among the
scholarly class (ʿulema), were to say ‘there is no benefit at all to a person who
visits . . . the tombs of the saints and scholars and upright ones,’ what is legally
required for the aforementioned Zeyd?” Saʿdeddîn’s response followed:
When considering the works, reports, and famous stories that the holy enlight-
ened spirits . . . of the great saints are not cut off from connection [with exist-
ence], and when the suitability of visiting tombs full of lights is a chosen
doctrine (mezheb-i muhtâr), it is necessary to choose it. The people of aptitude
manifest foolish evil acts, ignorance and error in censuring the witnessing of
works and realizations of the good men that have occurred in the tombs of the
saints. It is also well known that a shaykh of the people of faults, among the
most extreme fanatics of the Hanbalî [school], was a censurer of visitors of
tombs. He even ventured to censure the tombs of the prophets! Since he wrote
a book on that topic, and went wildly astray from the path of God, the scholars
of his age treated him with contempt and vilified him with attacks, accusations
of ignorance, and an extended imprisonment. It is well known that judgments
of scholarly gatherings on religious problems occurred [when he] opposed the
clarity of correct opinions. They accused people of error, and legal opinions
were issued saying, “if he doesn’t repent, let him be executed.” When the reli-
gious scholars were in unity, he repented and was saved by a confession of his
ignorance. The letters and copies of the legal decisions of the scholars of that
age are not recorded. And the saying, “when you are perplexed, seek guidance
from the people of the tombs,” is famous and accepted among the people of
perception.25
Saʿdeddîn’s decision stressed two important points. The first is that the visi-
tation of tombs is a lawful, if not prescribed, option for believers. However,
the şeyhülislâm offers no scriptural justification for this, instead referring to
customary practice based on the experiences and reports of the Muslim com-
munity over the course of its history. For this reason, his opinion would not have
been convincing to anti-Sufi factions, who often emphasized a strict grounding

in scriptural texts like the Qurʾan. This makes the second point even more
interesting – the decision contains an obvious condemnation of the life and works
of the noted medieval scholar, Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328), who continues to be
a controversial figure in both Muslim and non-Muslim scholarship. Saʿdeddîn
linked the legacy of Ibn Taymiyya to the anti-Sufi polemic in Ottoman circles
and, showing a remarkable understanding of the historical context, invokes Ibn
Taymiyya’s adversarial relationship with the Mamluk state as proof that he was
an extremist. Saʿdeddîn stressed that he was imprisoned to force a recantation of
his beliefs, suggesting that a forceful response to inflammatory anti-Sufi activi-
ties was warranted.26
While the courts of Murad III and his son Mehmed proved supportive of Sufi
orders like the Halveti, the sense of crisis that confronted the Ottoman Empire
at the end of the tenth/sixteenth century led others to revive debates about
reforming institutions inherited from the past. Muhyiddîn proved either reticent
or unable to fulfill his agenda; given the turbulent times in which he operated,
perhaps it could not have been otherwise.
.
Expanding the Şaʿbâni ye Legacy: Fuʾâdî and the Writing
.
of the Menâkibnâme-i Şaʿbân-ı Veli
Upon Muhyiddîn’s death, ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî rose to the leadership of the order
some time in 1012/1604.27 Imbued with Muhyiddîn’s vision, and better placed
to recognize the legal value of Saʿdeddîn’s fetvâ, he was ready to pursue a more
activist path. Yet his ambition would also mark a turning point in the wider
history of the Halveti order. He came to differ from his Şaʿbâniye predecessors
in a key respect: he was a prolific writer whose works survived into contemporary
times. This was a remarkable achievement for an otherwise modest provincial
scholar; this alone makes him a figure worthy of attention. He stands in contrast
to the multitude of big city denizens who normally make up the ranks of authors
in manuscript library card catalogs. Moreover, he mirrored Şaʿbân’s long life
and served as head of the Şaʿbâniye order in Kastamonu for nearly thirty-three
years until his death in 1045/1636 at the age of seventy-six.28
The first three years of Fuʾâdî’s leadership of the order is obscure, though we
can assume that the continuation of the Celâlî revolts until the decisive defeat of
their most powerful leaders during 1015/1607–1017/1608 probably limited his
options. In addition, like his predecessors, he would have to build relationships
with the order’s followers, many of whom would have begun their service with
Muhyiddîn. Fuʾâdî recognized early on that the biggest problem he had was a
lack of direct experience with Şaʿbân himself, who had died more than thirty-
five years before. The number of people with direct experience of Şaʿbân’s

teachings was rapidly diminishing, and Fuʾâdî realized that he had to act to pre-
serve the order’s legacy. With his background in the Kastamonu müfti’s scribal
service and his connections with Şaʿbân-ı Veli’s mosque, Fuʾâdî seemed more
than qualified to write a hagiography that could preserve the order’s history. The
remarks of his contemporaries spurred him to undertake the task, as he related in
the introduction to the Menâkıb:
Many noble men of God, among the people of spiritual knowledge, among the
Sunnî sect, wrote the anecdotes of the saints on account of belief in the acts of
grace of the saints being necessary and required, just as [belief] in the miracles
of the Prophets. The anecdotes of every master and his followers, being a written
tract or a sought after writing, were read out in their lodges and in other noble
gatherings, and the states full of perfection and sincerity and heart ravishing
acts of grace were known to everyone . . . On account of the exalted anecdotes
and acts of grace of the esteemed Şaʿbân Efendi, and the noble ones who were
among his successors, not being written in a tract, and on account of some of the
trustworthy brethren sincerely requesting that a hagiography be written for these
[people] as [they had been for] the other esteemed saints and noble shaykhs, it
came to my mind to set out to write a hagiography on some sheets of paper in
the year 1017 (1608). When the commencement was inspired [in me], it seemed
[that I would] abandon it, thinking, “be it little or much, this type of writing and
official recording prohibits work and unity in the corner of solitude, and is a
cause of many thoughts and multiplicity.” While [I was] on the brink of post-
poning [it] and turning away, the noble ones and gentlemen among the scholars
and the masters of knowledge, especially the most noble of our brethren and
greatest of his contemporaries, Şeyhî Efendi,29 who is now the müfti in charge
of Kastamonu, . . . said: “Although we read out and hear the hagiographies of
so many noble ones among the masters of grace in other lands and the things
pertaining to them in [Şaʿbân’s] lodge and other gatherings, even though the true
saint Şaʿbân Efendi buried in Kastamonu was among the masters of sainthood
and holders of grace, up to now his noble anecdotes and pleasant acts of grace
have not been written in a tract or officially taken down in writing. We used to
say in those places, ‘if a man of God . . . were to write [this] down, it would be
most worthy and appropriate.’ Now we find you have set out this far, and it is not
suitable at all that you should abandon the writing of the hagiography!”30
The sainthood of Şaʿbân Efendi may have been an accepted part of Kastamonu’s
traditions, but Fuʾâdî’s contemporaries recognized the absence of a written
text as a weakness. Fuʾâdî’s expression of hesitation was probably apologetic;
he knew that hagiographical works played a vital role in legitimizing a given

Muslim saint to a wider audience. If the Şaʿbâniye were going to compete in the
marketplace of regional holy figures, it would have to justify and codify its case.
Yet the modest origins of the project belie the ultimate ambitions embedded
in its creation. Fuʾâdî did not envision the work as a project aimed strictly at a
local audience, as he proceeded to offer praises to Sultan Ahmed I, lauding him
in poetic verse for restoring order.31 The work aimed to strengthen the connec-
tion of the Şaʿbâniye to the Ottoman court once more, re-establishing the tempo-
rarily disrupted ties established during the reigns of Murad III and Mehmed III.
However, Fuʾâdî became aware of a more pressing problem, rooted not in the
highest levels of government, but in the concerns of his rank and file followers.
He said of them:
I considered it to be a manifest service to the order and principles of the esteemed

master [to write a hagiography], and intended it to be a keepsake for the pure
brethren. I gathered together a detailed hagiography so that when the seekers
among the people of purity and the lovers among the people of faithfulness read,
listened, and understood with heart and soul the anecdotes of the bounty of the
state of the noble ones who were the master [Şaʿbân’s] successors, and were
glad and full of purity, they would recall this incurable one also, with a prayer
of blessing. But it was long and detailed, and not everyone could understand
[it] in its formulation and diction . . . [so] in order that everyone would easily
understand, I wrote an abridged and selected hagiography with simple Turkish
expressions . . .32
Most likely, since the original text was written in Arabic, it could not meet the
needs of many of Fuʾâdî’s contemporaries. As far as we can tell, Fuʾâdî com-
pleted both the primary and the abridged text in 1017/1608, but it was the abridg-
ment that would begin spreading rapidly thereafter.
Fuʾâdî’s goals for the work were not limited to seeking the approval of his
contemporaries, however. The hagiography interpreted (or re-interpreted) key
points in the narrative to channel the audience’s reception of it, and also sought
to deflect the criticisms of increasingly widespread anti-Sufi activity. Yet the
structure of his work is primarily troubled by a concern so important that he
commenced his writing not with the anecdotes of the virtuous saints who were
his subjects, nor even with the traditional explanation of the Halveti order’s
chain of authority and founding figures. Instead, he began the work with a
chapter whose title speaks volumes about the uneasiness that marked Fuʾâdî’s
environment: “Who Is a Real Saint, and Are Extraordinary Acts of Grace and
Intuition Necessary for All of the True Saints, or Is it Enough to be Found in
Some of Them?” The import of all subsequent narratives in the work rests on

this framework. For this reason, rather than simply mining the work for historical
material, it deserves a close examination in its own right.
Citing the great Sufi scholar, ʿAbdurrezzâk al-Kâşânî (d. 730/1330)33, Fuʾâdî
commenced his discussion by informing his audience that not every pious
individual can be esteemed a true saint. Instead, there are three specific condi-
tions that must be fulfilled. The first is that a true saint does everything for God;
he does not engage in upholding Islamic norms or the principles of the order
because he expects some kind of benefit to accrue to himself. Rather, he avoids
all activity which would draw him away from God. The second crucial charac-
teristic is that the true saint does not seek refuge in anything or anyone other than
God – the true saint accepts any calamity, pain or suffering without complaint
– nor seek support from others to mitigate it. Finally, the true saint remains aloof
from worldly affairs and never mixes worldliness with his actions or mystical
states. Absent any one of these three fundamental characteristics, no one can be
considered a true saint.34
Given our reading in the narratives of Şaʿbân-ı Veli and his successors, the
criteria Fuʾâdî established for his selection of materials for the hagiography
begins to emerge. The discussion zeroes in on saintly powers; if a questioner
asked why knowing these three criteria was important, Fuʾâdî had a ready
response:
Because an action that is extraordinary appears and manifests [itself] also from
a sorcerer, or the people of istidrâc,35 or someone other than a saint. It is on
account of this that there is no difference in the apparent sense between an act
of grace and magic. The two of them are both actions contrary to customary
[occurrence]. But when [the difference] is perceived, it is perceived from the
sign and the state of the person who manifests [it]. Meaning, if an action or state
contrary to customary [occurrence] were to appear from the prophets, it would be
a miracle. If the essence of the descriptions which were mentioned appears from
a saint in whom are found these three signs, then it is [the power of] sainthood
and an act of grace. But if the essence of the descriptions were to appear from
people in whom are not found the three signs, or who are people of carnal pas-
sions and innovation, or who are not among the Sunnî sect, it is not sainthood or
an act of grace. Rather, it is magic, or it appears through the power of cleverness,
shrewdness or a desire to make a living (ʿakl-ı maʿâş) . . . May God most High
protect the community of Muhammad from rabble-rousers, tricksters, frauds and
the evil of the evildoers!36
The abstract points Kâşânî raised thus have a practical application for the audi-
ence: Fuʾâdî was enjoining them to appreciate the difference between magic

and religion. The only appropriate recourse for an Ottoman subject in times of
trouble was to turn to God through the medium of his true saints, rather than
going to purveyors of magical spells, incantations or other competitors in the
market of supernatural power. Interestingly, Sufi shaykhs appear here as checks
against superstition and backwardness – mirroring the sort of accusations leveled
against Sufism itself in modern times. Fuʾâdî wanted to guide the people away
from competitors he deemed to be irreligious.37
Extraordinary acts of grace by saints like Şaʿbân-ı Veli notwithstanding,
Fuʾâdî goes on to clarify that aspirants on the Sufi path should not focus prima-
rily on the miraculous when assessing pious figures’ legacies in their society.
Continuing to channel Kâşânî’s writings, Fuʾâdî argued that many saints never
manifested any acts of grace at all:
When establishing the existence of a friend of God, it is necessary not to slander

or disparage [him], saying, “if an extraordinary act of grace were never found in
him, he has no act of grace, and those who have no act of grace are not among the
people of God.” It is necessary not to abandon him. But the state of the proph-
ets is not analogous to this! A miracle is necessary for all of them according to
their place, time, state and character, and according to the states and actions of
the people of that time. It is a proof and power for the trustworthiness in their
call to prophecy, meaning to their being real prophets. But if it is found in only
some of the saints, it is sufficient . . . [S]ince there is no end to the stages of the
knowledge of God and the advancement of a state, if an act of grace which is a
visible revelation of mysteries appears, as opposed to a spiritual revelation of
mysteries in a perfected knower who is able and capable of obtaining perfection,
it is certain that the visible revelation of mysteries blocks the spiritual revelation
of mysteries which is obtained in the world of the mind, passions, heart, and soul,
and prevents advancement.38
Miraculous occurrences should not act as the yardstick by which the audience
should judge either the saints or their own progress on the Sufi path. Contrary
to prophets, Fuʾâdî even intimates that the manifestation of miraculous occur-
rences can act as a curse rather than a blessing, distracting the seeker from further
advancement toward greater knowledge of God. Thus, Fu’âdî’s introduction
challenged its audience to take a more rigorous approach to religious devotion,
rather than looking for miracle workers to solve their problems.
To back up this point, he cited a point from the twelfth chapter of the
Muhimmât al-wâsilîn of Ebû Sabit ad-Daylamî (d. 589/1193)39 whereby the two
things that adepts on the mystical path must most beware of are charismatic acts
of grace (kerâmet) and extraordinary powers of discernment (firâset). Fuʾâdî

defined kerâmet as a form of what he calls “apparent unveiling” (kesf-i sûrî): acts
or states which most people are unable to accomplish and which contravene the
customary mode of existence. Firâset, on the other hand, does not entail “visible
revelation of mysteries”; it does, however, constitute the ability to know every
potential state, whether hidden or apparent, through the purifying rituals and
ascetic practices of the Sufi path. It is thus a form of perception achieved through
hard work that sometimes resembles kerâmet. When either kerâmet or firâset
took on a visible form in the worldly realm, it was a potential danger, for they
distracted the seeker on the Halveti path from his goal of reaching the seventh
and final stage of the process. In fact, manifestations of visible revelation of mys-
teries such as these were almost guaranteed to keep the seeker at a lower stage
of the process. Therefore, inner or spiritual revelation of mysteries is the goal of
the seeker, for only rarely can both apparent and spiritual revelation of mysteries
be combined by a given individual; one assumes that Fuʾâdî would present his
protagonist Şaʿbân as a prime example.40
This discussion culminated in a warning to his audience against certain types
of skeptics: namely, people who flirted with the Sufi path, but did not give it their
full effort, complaining otherwise about the inferiority of contemporary shaykhs
rather than admitting their own failings. Recreating the chatter of these skeptics,
he showed his audience what to avoid:
Some people . . . don’t engage partially or fully in the struggle in the path of
God, and they go around to strangers according to the needs of the passions of
the carnal soul and satanic urging. They never submit to the noble one whom
they know, and they censure the existence of the perfected guide and the noble
ones among the people of rapture whose prayers are accepted, saying, “none of
the noble ones of the people of rapture and those whose prayers are accepted
remains . . . If a real saint were to appear, I would join up and serve [him] with
all my soul.” Some [others], with imagined reverence, also think badly [of the
noble ones] without apprehending the true state, and become followers of Satan;
they look down their noses at [the saint] and say, “if he were a real saint and a
real noble one with acts of grace, he wouldn’t leave us to our own state; he would
enter our dreams or impose rapture [upon us], or he would appear to us and make
us dervishes without our needing to choose it; he would guide [us].” But this is
not the speech of an intelligent person, nor the words of a righteous person! It
appears from the trickery of the carnal soul and the urging of Satan. It is absurd
talk! But not every person understands the error and weakness of this talk.41
Here we have another problem that confronted Ottoman Sufism: people who
claimed that the mystics of the present (and future) represented only a slow drift

away from superior perfection in the past.42 Taking umbrage at the insult to
more recent saints, Fuʾâdî argues that it is not the saint’s job to go around saving
people from their own vices; the initiative rests, as always, with the individual.
In making this argument, he reconfigured the point of hagiography that presented
saints as able to bring about changes in people’s situation suddenly through
spiritual charisma. Saints do such things not just because they can, but because
they are given a reason to do so by their followers. Otherwise, why would the
prophets and saints of the past have left any unbelievers or censurers of their
work in the world?43
The argument had a practical aspect also, given the recent historical context
of Fuʾâdî’s era. He and his contemporaries needed to stress these points in the
wake of the Celâlî revolts, which had paralyzed and destroyed much of the
Anatolian countryside. In the wake of the chaos that accompanied these renegade
forces, which displaced so many, some may have lost their faith not only in
Ottoman government institutions, but also in recourse to social institutions like
Sufi orders, for their entreaties did not deliver them from the depredations they
had recently witnessed.44
After criticizing the common wisdom about the relationship between saints
and their deliverance of miracles for their communities, Fuʾâdî concluded by
arguing that the majority of saints never publicly manifest any miraculous acts.
Here, he finally invokes Şaʿbân-ı Veli as an example:
A person in a gathering asked Şaʿbân Efendi about something pertaining to the

problems of the exoteric law. The noble one replied by saying, “it is not neces-
sary for us to respond to this problem. It is necessary [to submit it] to the müfti,
who is the shaykh of the exoteric law. The great shaykhs replied to those who
asked about this point by saying, ‘go to the müfti.’” Another person in the gather-
ing thought badly of the noble one and made a recollection, saying, “how can a
knowledgeable shaykh who does not give a response to a problem of the exoteric
law be a perfected shaykh and a true saint? Specifically, it is necessary to put
a bridle, from beyond, on the day of judgment on the mouth of a scholar who
doesn’t give an answer to a legal question and is stingy [in responding].” That
mine of charismatic grace, in order to make that person understand what is correct
and to guide him, said with the inspiration of God: “One does not place a bridle
on our mouth on judgment day from afar because of our not giving a response to a
problem in exoteric law whose response is incumbent on the müfti. That meaning
which was recalled [above], accords with the supposition that [(a)] no scholar is
ever found who will respond to that problem, [(b)] that its response is specific to
a scholar, [(c)] that he also does not give a response out of laziness, and [(d)] he
continues to hinder [the inquiry by saying] that the problem is not known [even

if it isn’t]. If a question were asked about the knowledge or problems [pertaining
to] the order, spiritual knowledge, or the spiritual vision [of God] . . . then the
response to this knowledge . . . is incumbent on the [Sufi] shaykhs, who make this
secret clear and make manifest this state in order to guide that person.”45
Of course, the offending individual was forced to apologize to the shaykh

after receiving this rebuke. The point of the anecdote was that Şaʿbân refused
to address the question strictly for the purpose of showing off his knowledge;
instead, he referred the question to whoever was most competent to address it.
Still, Fuʾâdî’s focus on this anecdote cannot help but draw interest. He was, after
all, part of the legal structure of the müftülük himself, and a sub-text of this narra-
tive may be to underscore that mystical leaders did not threaten the realm of exo-
teric knowledge represented by jurisprudents and legal scholars. Each religious
figure in Muslim society would focus on their own sphere of influence; the public
should not tax a shaykh’s patience by expecting him to fulfill every possible role
when more proper alternatives existed.
Fuʾâdî then hammered home that this is the reason why beginners on the Sufi
path must not be exposed to miraculous occurrences by Sufi masters. Instead
of engaging in the struggle required to attain the developmental stations in
their proper order, their focus shifted to miracle working and how to channel
these powers to their own benefit. The example of Sultan Murad III, attempt-
ing to combine the role of Ottoman ruler with that of mystical aspirant in his
relations with the Şaʿbâniye mystic Şeyh Şücâʿ, come to mind here.46 Fuʾâdî
argued that even if the seeker were to witness acts of grace early in his train-
ing, it would be dangerous to speak of it. Enjoying the worldly benefits of such
acts might develop, and attract unwanted attention to the secrets of the saints.
Here, Fuʾâdî’s framing of Şaʿbân’s “spiritual hand” and warnings to his follow-
ers about not discussing it become intimately linked to his arguments about the
nature and purpose of sainthood in Islamic tradition. After all, Fuʾâdî quipped,
this is why the names of saints are followed by the formula, “may God make his
secret holy,” rather than “may God have mercy on him.” This diversion of the
attention of his audience from the miraculous sought to protect them from falling
victim to alternative supernatural practitioners offering solutions for worldly
troubles, be they false saints or the workers of oracles and magic.47
Yet Fuʾâdî offers us clues about his audience by humanizing his discussion
of issues raised by technical terms like “visible” versus “spiritual revelation
of mysteries” (kesf-i sûrî vs. kesf-i maʿnevî). In another advisory note, he dis-
cussed the “example of the wandering dervish” (abdâl). It acted as a response
to a question Fuʾâdî had heard about these issues: “What does the state . . . of a
dervish look like who is blocked from spiritual unveiling and knowledge of God

by the manifestation of this type of apparent unveiling?” The target of his subse-
quent rhetorical tirade is aimed at wandering dervishes like the Kalenders, well-
known antinomian figures who were frequently criticized by Muslim thinkers
as potentially deviant elements in Anatolian society, especially as their numbers
had multiplied following the Mongol invasions.48 Fuʾâdî responded that these
figures roaming the countryside were the best way to answer this question; for if
one asked wandering dervishes about manifestations of the divine, or the stages
and stations on the path to true spiritual knowledge of God, they would become
bewildered or speechless. But even worse, by Fuʾâdî’s time, some of these
figures had later settled into positions as false shaykhs, as he bitterly recounts:
[Such a dervish] fills up his gathering with storytelling of a pleasant and joking
type like a raven of the people of leisure and a crow full of cackling. He begins to
say things without substance that guide [one] to secrets of the causes of false ideas
and transitory illusions that fill up the water bottle of the heart. He listens to words
without substance from the joke-tellers, lazy people, and idle ones. After finding
[them] idle and without shame like himself, he says: “I journeyed in the world of
travel to great cities, towns, and fortresses such as so-and-so, and in those cities
and fortress I saw such beautiful rarities and wonders of creation! I traveled in
such-and-such mountains and deserts, and in those mountains and deserts I saw
such great and venerable rocks, trees, and types of vegetation and blossoms, and
such huge winged and pleasant voiced birds, and how many wondrous animals
and strange things like this! I went around in such-and-such kingdom, and I
visited in every province and every land such-and-such Sufi lodges and tombs of
the shaykhs and people of God! I met with such-and such noble ones who were
masters of grace and were among the people of sainthood, and was honored and
filled with purity through conversing [with them], and was distinguished through
their prayers of blessing and exalted favors!” He informs through such idle talk
and chitchat! But he is accordingly without information about the state and reality
of the things he traveled [to see], and the state and knowledge of those noble ones
whom he visited. He passes the day with worthless claims and futile words, and
doesn’t even know his own weakness and shame. He remains merely in the exo-
teric [world] and the apparent form of journeying, and by being uninformed in
his journey, and not being a knower of the people of witnessing or the [mystical]
state, he remains in the valley of ignorance and behind the veil of multiplicity.
While not even knowing his own state and value, he sponges off the people of
God even as he says he is one of the knowers!49
The vehemence of Fuʾâdî’s denunciation is striking. The society of his time must
have been rife with people who were playing at being a Sufi guide based solely

on their worldly experiences and connections. Having never properly embarked
on the Sufi path, their actions mocked the real struggle that was required. Fuʾâdî
concluded his first chapter by reiterating that the true saints in Ottoman society
establish themselves secretly among the general population (as did Şaʿbân), and
novices seeking out the Sufi path were frequently guilty of looking to the wrong
criteria in choosing their teachers. The dangers of seeking out a proper guide in
this early stage of the Sufi path could be resolved only by reference to the char-
acteristics that define any true saint.50
Only in the second chapter of his work does Fuʾâdî introduce the foundations
of the Halveti order, underscoring the centrality of the philosophical questions
surrounding true sainthood at the core of his work. The second chapter noted
the chain of authorities that produced the Halveti order, including its foundation
myths as supposedly taught to the caliph ʿAlî by the Prophet Muhammad. Yet
this part of the work is brief and does not elaborate upon most of the figures in
the silsile. He does make special mention of how ʿÖmer el-Halvetî’s practices
gave the order its name, and a brief history of how Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî and his
followers worked to spread the order in Anatolia, thus solidifying key historical
moment that consolidated the Halveti order.51 Also, figures such as Cemâl el-
Halvetî and Seyyid Sünnetî appear in the context of a group of forty followers of
Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî who were given permission to transmit the Halveti order and
Yahyâ’s teachings into Anatolia. From this core group, Fuʾâdî argues, S¸aʿbân’s
predecessors and teachers on the path emerged.52 Taken as a whole, the first two
chapters of the hagiography set out to define and interpret the historical accounts
of S¸aʿbân’s life and career both philosophically and historically. We can now
interpret the material discussed above in Part II as useful corroborating material
for this schema.
Thus, we now have a grasp of both the historical narrative about Şaʿbân
and his order and the concerns that shaped Fuʾâdî’s selection and presenta-
tion of that material. Yet how did his intended audience receive the work?
An examination of archives and libraries suggests it was successful, for many
copies of the manuscript have survived, even leaving aside the thirteenth/
nineteenth-century printed text that represents Kastamonu’s first printed
book.53 More evidence of the abridged hagiography’s popularity also lies
in the unfortunate disappearance of Fuʾâdî’s original and more extensive
Arabic-language hagiography. Additional anecdotal evidence for the work’s
success in winning an audience comes from Fuʾâdî’s later writings, where
he expresses surprise that only a decade after writing his work, he found
copies of it were circulating in the hands of scholarly contemporaries.54 The
signature work of ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî’s career, by all measures, rapidly spread
throughout the Ottoman domains wherever the Şaʿbâniye branch of the order

established itself, and laid the groundwork for a more ambitious agenda in the
future.
***
Contemporary historians, when first skimming this type of source for insights
on the past, might find Fuʾâdî’s objects of interest and periodically repetitive
presentation style dull and uninteresting in comparison with others. Moreover,
in sensing traditional literary conventions drawn from a mystical tradition
stretching back to the formative period of Islamic history, they might dismiss the
hagiography as a second-rate, largely derivative work that does not deserve our
attention. Even the historian in search of factual clues about provincial Ottoman
life, when made aware of Fuʾâdî’s underlying motivations and structuring of his
material, might be inclined to doubt its relevance or accuracy for the questions
they seek to answer.
Though not entirely unmerited, this chapter has largely refuted these surface
impressions in favor of a more holistic interpretation of the author and contem-
porary subjects of the work. However hackneyed the Menâkıb’s conventions
might appear to us today, the work succeeded in codifying a narrative and philo-
sophical understanding of sainthood that would guide the order well throughout
its history. The work captured the imagination of Ottoman subjects well beyond
Kastamonu in a process that has continued into the present, where the stories
have been republished anew in modern Turkish.
Moreover, if historians focus their attention solely on the subjects of the
Menâkıb, they risk missing a critical element in the story of the Şaʿbâniye order.
ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî’s hagiographical reflections were not the culminating achieve-
ment of his career, they were only the beginning of it. Capitalizing on the success
he had in rallying the order’s devotees around their new recruitment tool, Fuʾâdî
would devote the rest of his life to institutionalizing and inscribing the order
on the landscape of his hometown. The momentum that he generated would
continue well beyond his own passing three decades in the future, and bring the
Şaʿbâniye to a prominence that Fuʾâdî could only have visualized in a dream
when he took up his pen in 1015/1607.
Notes
1 For example, a garbled rendition of the Şaʿbâniye silsile found in a poorly copied version
of one of Sünbül Efendi’s treatises records that ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî was taught by Şaʿbân
himself, omitting all four of the successors; see Sünbül Sinân Efendi (d. 936/1529),
Risâlatuʾt-tahqîqiyya, Süleymaniye Lib., İstanbul, MS Kasidecizade 340, fol. 30b.

2 This idea appears in both AKAK, p. 61 and ZD, p. 18; neither gives any source, however.
On the Mûsâ Fâkih mosque, built at the end of the eleventh/seventeenth century long after
Fuʾâdî’s death, see KKE, p. 109.
3 See NYIL, p. 94; Fuʾâdî’s works include at least two surviving manuscripts written
in Arabic: the Maqâlat at-tawthîqiyya (discussed subsequently) and the Risalat al-
hayâtiyya, Süleymaniye Lib., İstanbul, MS Hacı Mahmud Efendi 2287/11. In addition, a
stated motivation he gives in the prelude to some of his writings was to translate Arabic-
and Persian-language materials into Turkish to broaden their audience.
4 MSV, pp. 113–14.
5 Mustafa ʿAlî’s disillusionment in the run up to the Islamic millennium should be com-
pared with the sentiments expressed here, though Mustafa ʿAlî’s relationship with Sufism
proved more ambivalent; see CF-MA, pp. 133–7.
6 Fuʾâdî pledged allegiance to Muhyiddîn Efendi around the Muslim millennium (1591 or
1592); at that point, he had been working for seventeen years with the müftis of the town;
see MSV, p. 120; also ZD, p. 18, which describes Fuʾâdî as having held a “secretarial
position” (müsevvit) in the müfti’s office.
7 See the remarks Fuʾâdî makes in OF-RV, fol. 42b.
8 Referring to one of the successors of the İstanbul-based Halveti shaykh Nûreddînzâde
Muslihuddîn (d. 982/1574).
9 MSV, pp. 114–15.
10 Fuʾâdî’s discussion of his submission to Abdülbâkî is a lengthy, complex passage that
includes a number of embedded Persian poetic couplets from Hâfiz; see MSV, pp.
115–17.
11 This bears strong resemblance to the Nakşibendi doctrine of khalwat dar anjuman,
whereby a Sufi must maintain his links with everyday society while nevertheless main-
taining internal detachment from it. For the development of this concept among the
Nakşbendi of Central Asia and Iran and their growing rejection of the type of forty-day
retreats espoused by the Halveti order; see JP-DO, pp. 30–4.
12 Meaning that Fuʾâdî was close to reaching the sixth stage of the Halveti path but failed to
finish because he was once again drawn back into worldly pursuits; to track the stages to
which he refers, see MİO, p. 26.
13 MSV, p. 120.
14 CI, pp. 66–7.
15 MSV, pp. 123–4.
16 For a brief summary of the Celâlî revolts, see CI, pp. 72–6; for a full accounting, see
Mustafa Akdağ, Celalî Isyanları (1550–1603) (Ankara: Ankara Üniversitesi Basımevi,
1963).
17 This expression could also mean, “since it is forbidden.”
18 MSV (T), 147–48; note that Fuʾâdî only related this narrative in the work that he
appended to MSV after the tomb had been completed.
19 For more on the appearance of various renovations and alterations to the mosque in 1560
and 1581, see KKE, p. 107; see also MBEH, pp. 152–8 for a copy of the vakıf deed of
989/1581.
20 For Saʿdeddîn’s biography, an outline of his career and his rise to the position of
şeyhülislâm, see NVA, pp. 429–31.
21 MSV, pp. 86–7.
22 Regarding the movement tied to Kâdızâde Mehmed (d. 1044/1635) and his followers,

Madeline Zilfi saw their uniqueness as lying both in their willingness to take a strongly
activist approach toward suppressing societal practices that they viewed as innova-
tions, and their success in doing so. Unfortunately, the Ottomans’ own use of the term
“Kâdızâdeli” is problematic, as it implied that the movement started with Kâdızâde
Mehmed himself. Zilfi herself rejected this idea, and located the origins of the trend in
part on the writings of the tenth/sixteenth-century scholar Birgili Mehmed Efendi (d.
978/1571); see MCZ-KZ, pp. 252–3 and MCZ-PP, pp. 143–6. The Ottoman historian
Naʿîmâ, though he also used the term “Kâdızâdeli,” did not consider them a new phenom-
enon in Islamic history, suggesting that they were merely the latest incarnation of a long
cycle in a conflict between exoteric scholars and Sufi leaders going back to early times;
see Naʿîmâ, v. 6, p. 218. Defining earlier manifestations of these tensions that preceded
Kâdızâde Mehmed’s career is thus awkward. For convenience’s sake, I shall employ the
term “proto-Kâdızâdeli” as a way of describing those who manifested these characteris-
tics before Kâdızâde Mehmed and his followers laid claim to it.
23 For a modern scriptural interpretation that denies the viability of any type of intercession,
see Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qurʾân, 2nd edn (Minneapolis, MN: Bibliotheca
Islamica, 1994), pp. 31–2. However, as the Ottoman part of this debate unfolds, the reader
should note how Rahman cites the well-known Hanbalî scholar Ibn Taymiyya as one of
his sources!
24 It is no coincidence that one of the figures who convinced the şeyhülislâm Bahâʾî Efendi
(d. 1064/1654) to countermand his own opinions condemning the practices of the Sufis
in the early 1650s was Saʿdeddîn’s son, Hoca Saʿdeddînzâde Ebûʾs-Saʿîd; see MCZ-PP,
pp. 142–3. It should also be noted that the Kâdızâdelis used the same tactic of employing
selected legal opinions dating from earlier periods to make a case for stringent prohibi-
tions against Sufi opponents.
25 MSV, pp. 88–9 and 162–3.
26 The best study to date of Ibn Taymiyya’s anti-tomb visitation activities is that of
Muhammad Umar Memon, Ibn Taimiya’s Struggle Against Popular Religion (The
Hague: Mouton, 1976); see also Henrik Niels Olesen, Culte des saints et pelerinages chez
Ibn Taymiyya (661/1263–728/1328) (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1991). For the revival of Ibn
Taymiyya as a flashpoint for modern Muslim radicalism, see SIV, pp. 94–107.
27 Fuʾâdî confirmed the year of his accession in another tract; ʿÖmer el-Fuʾadi, Risâle-i
Silsilenâme, Süleymaniye Ktp, İstanbul, MS Haci Mahmud Efendi 2287/13, fols
258b–9a.
28 NYIL, pp. 94–8. Yılmaz notes at least twenty-eight other works penned by Fuʾâdî aside
from MSV and its appended Türbenâme, though some may be extracted from the longer
hagiography on which these two were based. Copies of some works have not yet been
found; others may overlap in their subject material, which does not detract from the
impressiveness of the corpus.
29 Nothing further is known about this individual, but his remarks suggest that Fuʾâdî was
not the only person attached to the müftülük who had ties to Şaʿbân-ı Veli.
30 MSV, pp. 3–4.
31 This would not have been idle praise at the time Fuʾâdî wrote his work – August of
1017/1608 marked the battle of Göksün Plateau, which saw the defeat of the Celâlî leader
Kalenderoğlu at the hands of Kuyucu Murad Paşa (d. 1019/1610), which followed the
previous year’s victory over Canbuladoğlu ʿAlî Paşa. The timing of Fuʾâdî’s work being
sent off to İstanbul was no coincidence; see GAR, pp. 187–97.

32 MSV, pp. 5–6.
33 For more on Kâşânî, including the Istilahat as-sufiyya from which Fuʾâdî quotes, see
D. B. Macdonald, “ʿAbd al-Razzâk Kamâl al-Dîn b. Abûʾl-Ghanâʾim al-Kâshânî,” EI2, vol.
1, p. 377; he was also an important commentator on Ibn al-ʿArabî’s Fusûs al-hikam; see
Chodkiewicz, Michel, An Ocean Without Shore: Ibn ʿArabî, The Book, and the Law, trans.
David Streight (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993), pp. 47–8, n. 2.
34 MSV, pp. 9–10.
35 The term ehl-i istidrâc refers to people who lead others to perdition by deceptively
appearing to be successful in their activities the short run. One might loosely describe
them as people who made a living from tapping supernatural forces outside the bounds of
religiously accepted norms. Fuʾâdî claimed this practice was defined as hâlet-i kâzibe, or
a “state of being a liar.”
36 MSV, p. 10.
37 Fuʾâdî, like other early modern contempoaries across cultures, does not advance an
entirely new argument here on the validity of magical practices. His argument for distin-
guishing clearly between magic and religion for a lay audience is very much in tune with
a general transition that had been happening in other global contexts; see, for example, the
process in England described by Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New
York: Charles Scribner, 1971).
38 MSV, pp. 11–12.
39 See KC-KZ, v. 2, p. 1916. Fuʾâdî also cited the work of Abûʾl-Faraj ʿAbd ar-Rahman
b. ʿAlî b. al-Jawzî (d. 597/1200), Irshâd al-murîdîn fî hikâyât as-sâlihîn and Irshâd
at-tâlibîn, which was perhaps a commentary on the ʿAwârif of al-Suhrawardî by Ibn
Ahmed al-Bursevî; see KC-KZ, vol. 1, pp. 65 and 67. The predominance of early seventh/
thirteenth-century works is strongly suggestive of the intellectual foundations of mysti-
cism in Ottoman provincial circles during this time.
40 The discussion appears in MSV, pp. 16–17.
41 MSV, p. 13.
42 It is instructive to consider the comments of Fazlur Rahman in the conclusion to his work
on the history and development of Islam. He argues that the tendency to enshrine the
actions and sayings of the founders of the faith as law, rather than treating them as an
inspiring (and therefore more flexible) model, creates a situation whereby historically-
based responses to problems become enshrined as religious dogma. However, he also
condemns the roots of both Sufism and Shiʿism as responsible for enshrining this histori-
cal mentality of decline in the religious vitality of society in the medieval Islamic world-
view; see Rahman, Islam, pp. 235–54 and esp. pp. 244–6. The views Fuʾâdî expresses
here argue for a reassessment of such polemical viewpoints on Sufism’s “decline” in
the history of Islam, and modify them to better reflect the nuances present within Sufism
itself.
43 MSV, p. 14.
44 See William Griswold’s work on the impact of the Celâlî revolts on Anatolia in the con-
clusion of his monograph; GAR, pp. 212–14 and 220–1.
45 MSV, pp. 15–16.
46 See in the surviving correspondence between the sultan and his shaykh in SM-KM;
Murad repeatedly requests the shaykh’s help in realizing worldly goals or corroborating
the trustworthiness of an individual at court.
47 MSV, pp. 20–1.

48 For more on the diversity of the wandering dervish groups that roamed Anatolia from the
seventh/thirteenth century onward, see Ahmet T. Karamustafa, God’s Unruly Friends:
Dervish Groups in the Later Middle Ages (1200–1550) (Salt Lake City, UT: University of
Utah Press, 1994) and Ahmet Yaşar Ocak, Osmanlı İmparatorluğuʾnda Marjinal Sûfîlik:
Kalenderîler (XIV–XVII Yüzyıllar) (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1992).
49 MSV, pp. 18–19.
50 MSV, pp. 22–3.
51 The second chapter breaks down as follows: the origin myth of the Halveti order (pp.
24–9); the silsile up to Şaʿbân Efendi and his four major successors (pp. 29–30); an anec-
dote about ʿÖmer el-Halvetî on how the order took its name (pp. 30–1); and anecdotes
about Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî’s life and legacy (pp. 31–4).
52 MSV, pp. 32–3.
53 Abdulkadiroğlu identified thirteen copies of the manuscript in his bibliography, and this
was hardly a comprehensive list; see AKAK, pp. 119–20.
54 See Fu’âdî’s remarks about the hagiography in the Türbenâme, written sometime after
1027/1618 in MSV(T), p. 143.

Chapter
7
.
Inscribing the Şaʿbâni ye Order onto
Kastamonu’s Landscape
The success of the Menâkıb among its audience in the Kastamonu region helped
to consolidate the order at a time when a new generation of followers, increas-
ingly distanced from its subject, were coming to the fore. In many cases, the
work’s appearance would represent the final point at which the historian could
continue tracking the evolution of an order’s narratives and doctrines under
their hagiographer’s direction. Yet what makes the Şaʿbâniye especially fruitful
for historical inquiry is that we can continue tracking their evolution through
the subsequent activities of its membership and the continued output of their
leader, ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî. Growing acclaim for the Menâkıb soon translated into
attempts to transform the burial place of Şaʿbân-ı Veli into a fully-fledged Sufi
institution. This infrastructure building further swelled the order’s following,
which required more educational initiatives to better prepare them for growing
challenges emerging during a religiously and politically turbulent eleventh/
seventeenth century.
.
Constructing a Tomb for Şaʿbân-ı Veli amid Growing
Political Instability
The spread of Fu’âdî’s hagiography had an immediate impact that resonated far
beyond the Şaʿbâniye. We have already seen its dedication to Sultan Ahmed I,
and its arrival at court may well have sparked the enthusiasm of a Kastamonu
native who had risen to a position of power there. This dignitary, ʿÖmer
Kethüdâ (d. 1020/1611), had risen to become a steward to a powerful Ottoman
grand vizier, Kuyucu Murad Paşa (d. 1020/1611). It is unclear whether or not
ʿÖmer Kethüdâ’s activities on behalf of the Şaʿbâniye were approved by the
223

grand vizier himself. It is possible, since according to Fuʾâdî, Murad Paşa had
ties to the Mevlevî Sufi order and a love of Celâleddîn Rûmî’s works, with his
devotion repaid in the form of multiple victories during his suppression of the
Celâlî revolts.1 Murad Paşa may thus have recognized the utility of support-
ing a Kastamonu-based Halveti sub-branch that had good relations with local
Mevlevîs in supporting his campaigns against the rebels.
Whatever the case, it is most probable that ʿÖmer Kethüdâ acted of his own
accord as a form of pious patronage for his home region. ʿÖmer Kethüdâ’s
father, Himmet Dede, had become a follower of Şaʿbân Efendi around the time
of Fu’âdî’s birth, so he had long-standing family-based ties to the Şaʿbâniye.2
Nevertheless, Fuʾâdî’s account offers a sense of genuine surprise at receiving
such a sudden offer of assistance in building a tomb for Şaʿbân:
When this caller of the race of mankind [Fuʾâdî]3 was the servant of the poor
ones of the order on the prayer-rug of the recourse of the worlds, a letter desir-
ous in motive came [from ʿÖmer Kethüdâ] in the manner of consultation and
asking for permission, saying: “Let an exalted and decorated tomb be built with
a flourishing structure over the sepulcher full of light, to ennoble the holy soul
and exalt and glorify the noble honor of the esteemed master [Şaʿbân]. I have just
now vowed 3,000 gurûş. Let it be constructed from the revenue of my fiefs and
other lawful [sources of income]. Let it be a beautiful and tall tomb, so that the
noble name of the esteemed master will be recalled and praised among Arabs and
Persians4 alike as worthy of praise and glorification. If my vow is not sufficient,
however much money is expended until its completion, let my vow also [increase
to] be that much.”5
Fuʾâdî then recalled the aforementioned wishes of the now departed Muhyiddîn
Efendi, and interpreted this as a sign from his predecessor. He accepted ʿÖmer’s
offer to tithe the requisite amount to begin building Şaʿbân-ı Veli’s tomb. Within
a short time, the money that ʿÖmer gave proved sufficient to partially construct
the structure. The foundation was laid, and the walls reached up to the point
where the windows for the tomb would be placed.
Since ʿÖmer Kethüdâ was on campaign most of the time following his dona-
tion, it is clear that Fuʾâdî acted as the de facto overseer of the actual work; thus,
finishing his hagiography did not leave him idle for long. Unfortunately, the
legitimacy of the half-finished project was called into question when catastrophe
struck in the year 1020/1611. Kuyucu Murad Paşa, already in his eighties when
he was appointed to the grand vizierate in 1015/1607, died of old age while on
campaign against the Safavids in Diyarbekir. His equally unfortunate steward,
ʿÖmer Kethüdâ, soon followed him as a result of the dynamics accompanying

Inscribing the Şaʿbâniye on Kastamonu’s Landscape 225
the change of power. Murad Paşa’s death led to a transfer of power to Nasûh
Paşa (d. 1023/1614), a military commander who had been serving on the eastern
front for the several years. In need of money to pay his troops in the aftermath of
Kuyucu Murad Paşa’s campaigns, he imprisoned ʿÖmer Kethüdâ, along with a
number of other associates of the former grand vizier, for the purpose of acquir-
ing their wealth. Soon after his imprisonment, ʿÖmer Kethüdâ died; his death
was generally blamed on Nasûh Paşa even though he may not have intended
it.6 According to Fuʾâdî, all the unfortunate steward’s wealth was immediately
impounded by the state; even his heirs were not able to move quickly enough to
lay claim to any of it. Thus, the tomb was left half finished, and as time passed,
even began to fall into ruin.7
The first instinct of some of the supporters of the order was to press a claim
to some of the deceased Kethüdâ’s wealth to complete the tomb. It is instructive,
however, that when they proffered the plan of acting as witnesses on behalf of
Fuʾâdî’s proper claim to the resources, his response was rather pointed:
No! In our path there is no asking, laying claims, or requesting favors from
anyone. From Şaʿbân Efendi in particular there was never any demand or claim
in worldly matters by requesting or asking from anyone else throughout his
entire life. He never chose [to accept] the services of a pious foundation. In his
human needs and livelihood he entrusted himself to God, saying, “the sustenance
is God’s affair.” This poor one [Fuʾâdî] seated on his prayer-rug follows his
example, albeit with weakness and defects. Previously, we didn’t ask ʿÖmer
Kethüdâ for the building of the tomb. He began this job himself, with the permis-
sion of God. This time also we commend it to God most High, with assistance
from the spiritual power of [Şaʿbân Efendi].8
Despite Fuʾâdî’s use of Şaʿbân’s example as a worthy precedent, we should

not lose sight of his evolving political skills. His refusal to consider a challenge
reflected his concern about the new grand vizier, a known enemy of the order’s
former benefactors. By not pursuing the issue, Fuʾâdî kept a low profile to avoid
making the order and its followers a potential political target. This was a wise
choice under the circumstances; a political battle with a powerful grand vizier
could have crippled their recent gains.
Yet political concerns may not have been the only considerations driving
Fuʾâdî’s response. He also wanted to avoid what he viewed as a mistake by a
prominent and controversial predecessor, in the form of Şaʿbân’s successor Şeyh
Şücâʿ during the reign of Murad III. Traces of this tension can be read into the
confusion that surrounds one of the inscriptions on the Şaʿbân-ı Veli congrega-
tional mosque (see Figure 6). Specifically, an inscription was placed above the

M2313 - CURRY PRINT.indd 226
Figure 6 The inscription over the Şaʿbân-i Veli mosque
17/09/2010 07:50
main entrance to commemorate renovations made during the first decade of the
reign of Sultan Murad III. We know that before his death Şeyh Şücâʿ, had been
funneling resources into this renovation project out of devotion to Şaʿbân. The
first two lines of the inscription confirm this, reading: “Şücaʿ Efendi, spiritual
guide to Sultan Murad * Renovated the building and made it into a mosque full
of light.” What does not fit, however, is the second half of the inscription. Those
two lines provide a jarring discrepancy from the first two: “Dervish ʿÖmer
Fuʾâdî recited a chronogram (târîh) for the renovation * The mosque of Şaʿban
Dede became more prosperous.”9
The inscription is problematic not least due to the apparent inability of schol-
ars to agree on a date for it. Ziya Demircioğlu and Abdulkerim Abdulkadiroğlu
read the date of the inscription’s placement as 984/1576, although the latter
expressed reservations about the numerical value embedded within the letters
of the inscription.10 Others claim that the inscription should be dated 988/1580,
based on correspondence within specific bureaucratic records and the vakıf
deed for the complex dated Ramazan 990/August 1581.11 These issues might
be reconciled by various means, but all these discussions overlook the fact that
none of these dates correspond with the period in which ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî was
active within the Şaʿbâniye order! The earliest possible date of his involvement
with the order as a newly recruited devotee was 994/1586, at least four to five
years after the latest proffered date for the inscription. Only two possibilities
exist: either the second half of the inscription, or the entire text of the inscription
itself was added at a later period that we cannot definitively date. Fuʾâdî must
have altered or replaced the original plaque while overseeing the other construc-
tion projects that took place during the first decade of his tenure as head of the
Şaʿbâniye. In so doing, Fuʾâdî apparently renamed the mosque after Şaʿbân
in this new inscription, whereas previously, the renovated structure had been
named after Şeyh Şücâʿ.12 To put it bluntly, this inscription provides suggestive
evidence of a potential slight to the deceased Şücâʿ’s legacy by renaming the
mosque after Şaʿbân and acknowledging Şücâʿ only as a renovator. Given the
sentiments that Fuʾâdî expressed about being too closely involved in state affairs
over revenue, we see a de facto expression of his distancing the Şaʿbâniye from
the earlier political power acheived by Şücâʿ, who had regularly extracted favors
for himself and his followers from Sultan Murad.13 Unfortunately, Fuʾâdî’s feel-
ings toward the order’s former benefactor requires a certain degree of specula-
tion, since he refers to Şücâʿ only in passing. He offers no further details that
allow us to assess Şücâʿ’s relations with other figures in the order during his
political ascendancy. Yet given the circumstantial evidence, this may explain
Fu’âdî’s curious silence about the matter in his works.
The political dangers and Fuʾâdî’s reservations about an aggressive approach

to them led to an immediate halt in the tomb building project. This sign of ill-
fortune, however, soon gave rise to other troubles. Noting the problems that the
tomb project had encountered, unspecified voices began to make accusations
against Fuʾâdî himself, saying that he gave permission for the building of the
tomb in contravention of Şaʿbân’s will. Some even mocked him by saying that
ʿÖmer Kethüdâ’s death was caused by Şaʿbân from beyond the grave on account
of his anger at the building of an unapproved tomb.14
That time also saw the rise of groups to whom Fuʾâdî refers as “censurers,
fanatics, and ignorant people.” At first, he ignored their carping about the project
and those who were backing it, but the arguments began to gain strength among
the local people, and they became increasingly persistent about abandoning the
tomb project altogether. They even began to have an impact on Şaʿbân’s admir-
ers, forcing Fuʾâdî onto the defensive against his own followers. Finally realiz-
ing the gravity of the situation, he addressed his followers publicly one day while
commenting on a tradition of the Prophet Muhammad:
Muslims! Just as everyone has the three levels of the carnal soul, the soul, and the
heart in the knowledge of Sufism; the levels of intellect are also three: thought of
the present state (ʿakl-ı maʿâş), thought of the future (ʿakl-ı maʿâd), and thought
of the totality (ʿakl-ı küll). Whatever level someone is on, it is the business of the
upright and sound intellect to distinguish and discriminate between the true and
the false, the trustworthy one and the liar, and the intelligent and the unintelligent.
If something is said, the person who hears . . . must think and comprehend, and
accept it according to that [process of discrimination], and speak out amongst the
people. Every person, if he does not respect this point and speak out [anyway], the
majority will regret it, and it is possible that they will also win shame and public
disgrace! Among you, it is not on account of this issue or any state or wisdom that
you give credence to the speech full of slander of the dissolute and uneducated who
say, “Şaʿbân Efendi didn’t want the tomb; he cut down and killed ʿÖmer Kethüdâ
from beyond” . . . You dare to slander and falsely accuse the master, the Pole of the
World! The situation is this: The deceased ʿÖmer Kethüdâ’s noble wish in build-
ing the tomb . . . was to respect and honor . . . the assistance [he received] from the
holy soul of the master. It was not to denigrate and insult [ʿÖmer] that the attribute
of divine wrath appeared from his spiritual presence and destroyed the deceased.
If it were true that the master did not accept the building of the tomb and that the
building of the tomb was begun out of inattentiveness, then this sign, with the
power of his charismatic grace and insight into the attribute of divine wrath, would
have appeared to the poor one [Fuʾâdî] . . . with a reproachful lecture, saying, “hey
inattentive one . . . lacking in state and perfection! Why did you permit the building
without knowing that we didn’t accept it?”15

Fuʾâdî appealed to his followers to trust his judgment as leader of the order; as
he put it, the spiritual presence of Şaʿbân Efendi had gotten the order through
many difficulties in the past and would do so again. Rather than risk falling out
of divine favor by relying on misguided thinking based on improper proofs, the
order had to show courage in the face of adversity.
This rebuke allowed Fuʾâdî to regain control of the situation and deflect the
misgivings of some of his wavering followers, but others still expressed doubts.
The more activist opponents of the tomb project were even more forceful, and
confronted Fuʾâdî and his followers with the following complaints:
Building tombs over the graves of the people of God and the shaykhs, and
burning candles and lamps in the tombs is not appropriate. Wasteful expenditure
is unlawful, and it is not appropriate to build it with the money of the Sultan, the
viziers, or the administrators [either].16
This criticism is indicative of the rhetoric employed by proto-Kâdızâdeli forces,

and anticipated the more forceful attacks to be launched against the Halveti
several decades later. Fuʾâdî had already found these criticisms sufficiently
threatening that he included a legal opinion from the prominent şeyhülislâm
Saʿdeddîn Efendi denouncing those who tried to declare tomb visitation illegal.17
He also buttressed this by advancing his own argument that tomb visitation was a
custom that had appeared long ago in Islamic history, and that as a long-standing
custom of the Muslim community, it fell under the jurisdiction of the Prophetic
tradition, “my community will never agree on an error.” If God did not accept
the custom, it would not have manifested itself as a widespread practice among
Muslims.18
Responding to the arguments of his critics about candles and lamps in tombs
being a waste of useful resources, Fuʾâdî fell back on the tradition of seeking
help from the people of the tombs when perplexed. If the tradition confirmed this
as a beneficial activity, expending resources must not be a wasteful expenditure.
When his opponents attempted to quote a legal opinion from the Hanefî scholar
Kâdıhân (d. 592/1196) that excessive lighting in a mosque did, in fact, constitute
a wasteful expenditure,19 Fuʾâdî countered by asking if this also made lighting
the tombs of the Prophet and his companions in Medina and other places unca-
nonical, since this was a custom that had been practiced by so many prominent
Muslim forebears and made a positive impression on non-Muslim populations as
well. He then quotes both Kâdı Beyzâvî and Ebûsüʿüd Efendi commenting on a
Qurʾanic verse, in which they affirmed that any act which beautifies a mosque or
other religious structure is laudable.20
Yet the most damaging accusation leveled by Fuʾâdî’s detractors was that

the sacrifices and lighting of candles and lamps in tombs made their practition-
ers unbelievers because they sought help from someone or something other than
God – it resembled bowing to idols condemned in the Qurʾan. Fuʾâdî tried to
dismiss this argument as absurd; after all, Muslims visiting tombs could not in
any sense believe that they were worshiping the saints or their tombs in place of
God.21 Still, the proto-Kâdızâdelis may have hit dangerously close to home in
their accusations. Fuʾâdî noted in another part of his hagiography that Muslims
were not the only ones who were venerating the tomb of Şaʿbân-ı Veli:
But after his death, the seeking help and profiting spiritually from his spiritual
influence was not cut off . . . Non-Muslims from the protected religions other than
Islam come with candles and sacrifices, and they bring the sick and other people
struck by calamity, and they visit and request things. Even this poor one [Fuʾâdî]
was himself aware [of this], by being the servant of the poor ones and the guide
of the seekers on the path on his prayer-rug of the dwelling of the worlds. When
they prayed, I prayed for their faith and their submission [to Islam]. At present,
they still have not stopped coming and going, and when the poor one asks them
about their coming with candle and sacrifices to visit, they reply, “we request
favor and help in our important affairs and in our times of confusion with pain
and suffering, and we vow candles and sacrifices. We are satisfied through his
sacredness, and our pain and suffering are taken away.”22
The blurring of confessional lines taking place at the tomb, a phenomenon rooted
in the centuries long Islamicization of Anatolia, had become a potential lightning
rod for critics of the Şaʿbâniye.23
Thus, Fuʾâdî’s arguments had the potential of appearing weak. In the case of
lamps being used in tombs, he had fallen back mostly on arguments that dealt
with mosques, often of an exalted character, and applied them to Şaʿbân’s tomb
through analogy, an argument that would not have convinced any scholar bent
on criticizing the project. The sober minded Ottoman polymath, Katip Çelebi,
expressed a degree of cynicism about the visitation of tombs even as he took his
usual moderate position by also condemning the Kâdızâdeli leaders for stirring
up disorder over it. He noted that a whole industry had grown up around selling
the lamps and supplies that went into the tomb complex visitation and pilgrim-
age industry; thus, it was hopeless to try and stop the foolishness.24 But it is still
telling that Katip Çelebi described tomb visitation practices as “foolishness!”
Fuʾâdî’s enemies had one final argument, which was that any benefit that a
person gained in the afterlife would be a result of one’s own actions. A person
could not gain any benefit from anyone else when it came time to be judged. In
other words, the practice of tomb visitation to seek assistance or intercession

would accomplish nothing at best, even if it were not uncanonical. Attributing
this to the influence of the Hanbalî legal school, and even going so far as to declare
the Hanbalîs a false mezheb, Fuʾâdî suddenly went on the offensive against his
critics.25 Drawing from the Arabic language work of a Shâfiʿî jurist, Najm
al-Dîn Muhammad al-Ghaytî (d. 984/1576), entitled Well-Directed Answers to
Numerous Questions (al-ajwabat al-sadîdah ʿalâ al-asʾilat al-ʿadîdah),26 he
enumerated in full a whole list of Prophetic traditions about the state of the dead.
The traditions addressed questions such as whether or not the dead can hear and
respond to the calls and greetings of the living, whether or not they take delight
in such visits, and what days are best to visit the tombs. Unusually, Fuʾâdî did
not bother to translate these materials for his audience, indicating that this part
of the work was only for scholars who knew Arabic.27 Of course, Najm al-Dîn’s
compilation included only traditions describing the Prophet Muhammad and his
companions’ favorable attitude toward the visitation and greeting of the dead.28
However, the lack of translation demonstrates that the Türbenâme section of the
work that came to be appended to the hagiography of Şaʿbân Efendi served dif-
ferent and more urgent purposes.
Thus, piecing together the historical context of the Risâle-i Türbenâme now
becomes a more urgent matter. Most subsequent copyists and compilers of the
two manuscripts, including those who saw to their first printing in Kastamonu
in 1294/1877, appended this second tract to the end of the hagiography.
Nevertheless, we should not lose sight of the fact that the two works do not form
an organic whole, nor were they intended to. The work emerged in the midst of
an unstable period in Ottoman history following the death of Sultan Ahmed I at
a young age. This led to an intense period of political jockeying that surrounded
the rapid enthronement and deposition of Sultan Mustafa over the course of
several months at the end of 1026/1617, culminating in the controversial reign
of Sultan ʿOsman II thereafter. The Risâle-i Türbenâme itself was completed
some time in 1028/1619 at the conclusion of the tomb’s construction and final
ornamentation, and even a cursory reading indicates that its tone and content are
considerably more defensive than the celebration of the Şaʿbâniye in the earlier
hagiography. Over a quarter of the tract is devoted to addressing and refuting the
criticisms of tomb building and visitation. The work also heaps praise upon those
who were involved in the tomb project as a way of rehabilitating their names in
the face of such criticism. At the beginning of ʿOsmân II’s reign, Fuʾâdî appar-
ently had reason to feel nervous about the enthronement of a new ruler who may
not have been as sympathetic to the cause of Sufism and the Halveti as some of
his predecessors had.29 By addressing Sultan ʿOsmân II directly in the introduc-
tion to the new treatise, Fuʾâdî sought to bring his attention to arguments that
could refute critics who were growing more influential in circles of power. The

inclusion of a large numbers of Prophetic Traditions from a respected Shâfiʿî
scholar, however, is something of a puzzle in that the Ottoman political elites
were staunch backers of the Hanafî school. Was Fuʾâdî really arguing for a shift
toward Shâfiʿî jurisprudence in matters involving Sufism? Given his background
in the Islamic court system, it is hard to believe that Fuʾâdî would be unaware of
the significance of his actions.
Keeping all this in mind, how did Fuʾâdî and his contemporaries succeed in
overcoming the opposition? The spirited defense of the role of tomb visitation in
Islamic tradition indicated that the potential failure of the project was possible,
given the loss of its financial backing and the concerted arguments advanced by
the proto-Kâdızâdelis. This put Fuʾâdî in a bind, for if the tomb construction
remained in limbo, this would be interpreted by the community as a sign from
God (if not Şaʿbân himself!) that the practices and institutions associated with
the Ottoman Muslim cult of saints were unacceptable. Ironically, Fuʾâdî had also
painted himself into an ideological corner by forbidding any attempt at seeking
support from prominent figures in Ottoman society, financial or otherwise. For
two uncomfortable years, the tomb project was halted, leaving Fuʾâdî with little
option but to pray for some means by which it could be completed.30
Yet despite Fuʾâdî’s reticence in developing close ties with Ottoman
political circles in the capital, that would be exactly where the solution to the
dilemma would emerge. One day, Mehmed Ağa, a future head of the palace
guard (kapıcıbâşı) under ʿOsmân II, arrived in Kastamonu in conjunction with
his duties as overseer of the nearby mines in Küre-i Nühâs (maʿden kethüdâsı).
Accompanying him was Akkâş Hibetullah Efendi, a local figure and judge
who had just been appointed to serve in Küre-i Nühâs also. They approached
Fuʾâdî, asking what they could do to move the stalled project forward. By his
own account, Fuʾâdî was not forthcoming with any ideas, claiming that he com-
mended his affairs to God. So the pair of dignitaries once again offered to act
as intermediaries to free up the money pledged by ʿÖmer Kethüdâ; not surpris-
ingly, Fuʾâdî balked. Mehmed Ağa and Hibetullah Efendi, however, were not as
easily deterred by his resistance. They conceded that while Fuʾâdî’s assessment
of Şaʿbân’s legacy had merit, “freely willed acts are a cause of the manifesta-
tion of the eternal will [of God].” Therefore, he should let them seek the money
on their own initiative from other sources if he would not consent to recouping
the previously pledged funds. But Fuʾâdî still refused to go along, underscoring
the depth of his concerns about overly political ties even if he were not directly
involved in seeking them.
The two dignitaries were then struck by a flash of inspiration. What if the
completion of the work on the tomb were to be financed by vowed tithes and
payments for supplies like candles by the local people who regularly sought

Şaʿbân’s assistance? Fuʾâdî hesitated, then grudgingly agreed that there was
nothing to stop them contributing funds of their own accord; they would merely
be doing the same thing that ʿÖmer Kethüdâ had done. This would not contra-
vene Fuʾâdî’s prohibition on active attempts to seek investment. The two digni-
taries pounced, and promptly tithed a sum of gold coin themselves. Others who
had gathered to observe the meeting also contributed small sums, although the
amount collected was insufficent to cover the expense of completing the tomb.31
Yet the modest actions of these local dignitaries unleashed an avalanche of
further support. Part of this may have been tied to a decision that Fuʾâdî made
with regard to a final request from his two benefactors:
When they requested the announcement and public exposure of this beginning to
the people, I [Fuʾâdî] said, “a record should not be made in writing and remem-
brance of the names of those who vow and the givers of blessings; let everyone
bring either a little or a lot through his [or her] own will, acceptance, desire and
sincerity and submit it, and afterward let a record be made of income and expen-
ditures.” The wealthy and notables among the timâr-holders, having taken part in
the campaign against Persia in the year that ʿÖmer Kethüdâ was martyred, fixed
and confirmed their promises and vows, saying, “if the tomb remains incomplete
and we are not on campaign in the coming year, and if you are present in our lands
in the days of the government of the Sultan (eyyâm-ı devlet-i pâdişâhî)32 [during
which] our vows take place, each of us shall give from our personal wealth to the
extent we are able, and the tomb shall be built.” All of the sipahi grandees and the
other noble people and notables from the people of the province agreed, and each
of them brought their vows with sincerity without being requested or implored
[to do so]. They made this poor one trustee for all of it . . .33
By not tying the project to any one personality within the power structure, Fuʾâdî
recognized a means by which he could avoid tying the project too closely to any
one power base. The open contribution scheme allowed anyone to take part in
the spiritual rewards of contributing, but without leaving a dangerous paper trail
to a controversial flashpoint in the evolving religio-political context.34
However, Fuʾâdî stressed also that the support of the powerful and wealthy
was not the only factor at work. In exultant language, the Türbenâme describes
how Şaʿbân Efendi’s other spiritual descendants in the area quickly rose up to
contribute in other ways, sending parties of their followers in groups of ten,
fifteen, or twenty at a time to the lodge to offer unpaid labor for the tomb’s
construction. Even the poorer members of the community joined them in giving
whatever service they could. A teacher at a local school, Elmâcızâde Muhyiddîn
Efendi, sent his children and his students to work on the project, arguing it would

be a form of “spiritual education.” Not to be outdone, the women of the com-
munity, young and old alike, joined together to produce linen cloth that could
be sold on the open market, and donated their revenues to the tomb. Whatever
could not be sold was given to clothe the poorest workers laboring on site.35
Throughout the community, a unified sense of purpose made the long delayed
completion of the tomb an idea whose time had come. On another level, the
sudden resurgence in effort may have coincided with the growing political weak-
ness and eventual execution of the hated grand vizier, Nasûh Paşa, in 1023/1614.
As the local supporters of the Şaʿbâniye realized that the political problems that
had originally derailed the building of the tomb were on the wane, they followed
the lead of their İstanbul-based allies and moved to make the project their own.
The tomb’s completion marked the triumphant conclusion of the narrative.
A plaque was placed over the northern entrance to the tomb crediting ʿÖmer
Kethüdâ for initiating the project, and praising the community for finishing it:
“The Kethüdâ Bey whom they called ʿÖmer * Began the tomb with sincerity
* Because he departed to the realm of mercy * The people of generosity gath-
ered together and constructed it * For its commencement date, Dervish ʿÖmer
[el-Fuʾâdî] recited a chronogram * The sepulcher of Şaʿbân, Sultan of eternal
union.”36 When the last stone was about to be put in place in the dome, a massive
Halveti zikr ceremony took place that sent Fuʾâdî into such a powerful mystical
state that he was unable either to speak or to move, but was frozen in place gazing
upwards at the last gap. As the new structure shook from the ruckus, the head
architect worried that the new building was structurally unsound. However, his
doubts were assuaged by Fuʾâdî’s brother, Hacı Mehmed Dede, who suggested
that the tomb was performing the ritual along with the congregation! Thereafter,
the keystone was joyfully lowered into place. News of the completion of the
project and attendant celebration spread throughout the region, increased the
fame of the tomb and most critically, struck directly at the credibility of
the tomb’s detractors.37
Still, the completion of the structure did not solve all its problems. In fact, the
stone construction of the edifice was not structurally sound, perhaps as a result
of its erratic history. The roof of the tomb leaked in inclement weather, and
the decorative elements added by the tomb’s builders were damaged. Luckily,
additional benefactors appeared to address these issues. Ironically, given his
previous stance, Fuʾâdî did not shy away from describing the order’s benefac-
tors once success had been achieved, and we learn a great deal about the political
backing for the Şaʿbâniye.
The first person to help out was Kastamonulu Kâtib Mehmed Efendi, a
local figure who had made good by securing a position in the imperial chancery
(divân-ı hümâyûn) in İstanbul. This official, also known by the name Şekerzâde,

had been one of Fuʾâdî’s teachers and benefactors in his younger days; he had
also served under the ill-fated ʿÖmer Kethüdâ.38 His funds added a symmetri-
cal overhang (turre) to the edge of the tomb to better protect the structure from
the weather. In addition, he donated a green wool covering for Şaʿbân’s tomb.
Fuʾâdî actually took more pleasure in the latter gift, because it allowed him
finally to wrap Şaʿbân Efendi’s sacred black turban at the head of his sepulcher,
fulfilling the third and final wish of his spiritual guide, Muhyiddîn Efendi.39
As for the leaky dome, help came in the form of a donation from the grand
vizier Halîl Paşa (d. 1040/1631) at the beginning of his campaign against Safavid
Persia in 1026/1618. He had the dome strengthened by sealing it with a lead
capping in the hope that Şaʿbân Efendi would assist him in his campaign. Fuʾâdî
had to engage in some spin on this point, for most accounts viewed Halîl Paşa’s
campaign as unsuccessful; he also lost his position thereafter.40 In contrast,
Fuʾâdî portrayed the tomb’s benefactor as having concluded a successful cam-
paign that had conquered both the fortress at Ardabil and the city of Tabriz, with
the result approved by ʿOsmân II in the form of a peace treaty. A critic, however,
might have pointed out that the peace treaty’s terms made only slight adjust-
ments in the Ottoman–Safavid borderland, and that these changes in fact favored
the Safavid ruler Şâh ʿAbbâs. A defensive tone therefore marked Fuʾâdî’s pres-
entation of this particular benefactor.41 Following the completion of the lead cap
on the dome, a gilded top was engraved and placed at the top of the dome by a
local artisan by the name of Şâh Mehmed Efendi, who was also a judge active in
Kastamonu at the time.42
The final touch came courtesy of Kûrşûncuzâde Mustafa Paşa, an Albanian
who served as governor of Bosnia several times over the course of his career.
First appointed to the post under Sultan Ahmed I, from 1016/1608 to 1017/1609,
he was appointed a second time during Sultan Osman II’s reign from 1029/1620
to 1030/1621, but was subsequently dismissed and exiled from the European
provinces in conjunction with the rise of ʿAlî Paşa to the position of grand vizier
and the onset of ʿOsmân II’s ineffective campaign against Poland.43 Thanks to
Fuʾâdî, we learn that he also served as governor of Kastamonu for at least two
years before his appointment in 1620 to Bosnia. When he noticed the tomb’s
imperfections, he stepped in with a generous donation of his own to fix them.
He added another entrance to the tomb, along with a private harem to accom-
modate female visitors. Finally, a mirror was placed at a strategic point near the
keystone of the arch of the tomb so that visitors would see their own reflections
and take away a reminder about the key mystical principle of knowing oneself.44
This last addition led Fuʾâdî to compose a poem placed over the eastern entrance
to the tomb: “Kûrşûncuzâde, vizier full of nobility * Built a gate and harem for
the tomb * A mirror from the secret of the soul was placed at the door * So that

the knower shall see the honored soul * Fuʾâdî saw the chronogram in the mirror
* The mirror of nobility was opened for the builder * 1028 (1618).”45 When
Fuʾâdî wrote the Risâle-i Türbenâme a few years later in 1029/1620, mention-
ing the assistance of Kûrşûncuzâde Mustafa Paşa as the final benefactor in the
completion of the tomb complex tracked smoothly with the vicissitudes of power
struggles in the Ottoman capital. The aforementioned Halîl Paşa’s dismissal
would have been balanced by Mustafa Paşa as the recently promoted governor of
Bosnia. The contemporary audience would recognize that each of the grandees
in power at the time would have contributed something to the tomb. Fuʾâdî con-
cludes the narrative by reiterating the aforementioned anecdote about Şaʿbân’s
recognition by the unnamed saint in Khorasan who sent his dervishes to take the
mirror from him, linking this to the mirror that Mustafa Paşa had donated.
By the time that Fuʾâdî completed the Türbenâme, we might think that
he had reached the height of his influence. Over the course of his fifteen-year
tenure at the head of the Şaʿbâniye, he had seen the complex undergo substantial
improvements that made it into one of the premier pilgrimage sites in the region.
Overcoming earlier setbacks, powerful Ottoman grandees were now coming to
pay their respects to the great saint and his followers, and making contributions
for their benefit. The completion of the project also delivered a powerful blow
to anti-Halveti antagonists in the community. Still, the work’s defensive tone
marked a palpable sense of discomfort about the environment of the era. As a
whole, it reads at times more like an apologia for the activities of the order than
a celebration of Şaʿbâniye success.
Moreover, the Risâle-i Türbenâme would not be the only communication
that Fuʾâdî would send to İstanbul. He appears to have shared the unease of
many in the Ottoman Empire over the reign of ʿOsmân II, who still generates
controversy among contemporary Ottoman historians. Fuʾâdî fired off another
tract to ʿOsmân’s court shortly after the completion of the Türbenâme entitled
Risâletüʾl-müsellesât (“The Treatise on Groups of Three”), as an advisory letter
to the sultan. Building on a story about the Prophet and his companions in which
each of them related in turn the three things they loved most, Fuʾâdî sought to
demonstrate to ʿOsmân II what values the leader of the Muslim community
should emulate. He concluded by warning the sultan to emulate the Prophet and
his successors in wielding “both the manifest and the spiritual sword,” as opposed
to just the former. In equally cryptic fashion, he alludes to events at the time by
saying that “it is not a good thing to kill some of the men of the state; the edifice
of God will collapse.” This seems to indicate that Fuʾâdî, along with many other
religious and political notables of his time, did not like ʿOsmân II’s attempts to
shake up the power structure of the empire.46 Given the aftermath of ʿOsmân II’s
reign, which ended in a regicide and an uncomfortable historiographical debate

among Ottomans over its implications, we can conclude that Fuʾâdî’s efforts to
influence the political context in hopes of reconciling the competing factions did
not prove any more successful than any other.47
Refining the Concepts of a Sufi Order: ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî’s

Doctrinal Writings
The Risâletüʾl-Müsellesât is a good introduction to another important aspect of

Fuʾâdî’s career that has not attracted much notice. His didactic works, aimed at
introducing his audience to basic concepts and instructing them on various reli-
gious points, would prove to be an important contribution that further expanded
Şaʿbâniye institutions. What is most critical is that Fuʾâdî’s didactic works were
aimed not only at his own following, but also at reaching a broader audience to
educate them more fully about the best way to pursue the Şaʿbâniye path. To
interpret these works, we must start by recognizing that they sought to address
different types of audiences based on their subject matter. While some works
discussed the simplest aspects of the path and were aimed at novice devotees,
others dealt with intricate issues in Sufi hermeneutics, and identify their audi-
ences as capable of grappling with complex discussions about Islamic theology
and philosophy. However, the texts all had one thing in common: they aimed
to encourage and educate their Turkish-speaking audience to seek a deeper
understanding of the principles of the Halveti path which, in turn, drew upon the
legacy of Şaʿbân-ı Veli and his successors.
Unfortunately, there is one problem that confronts present-day scholars: it is
difficult to date these writings with any certainty. Even given a close reading, the
manuscript copies that survive are often cryptic about dates of production; some-
times they leave no identifiable dates at all. Yet the course of Fuʾâdî’s career
suggests that he focused much of his energy on establishing Şaʿbân’s hagiogra-
phy and tomb complex first, solidifying an institutional center for the activities
of the Şaʿbâniye. So it is perhaps instructive that the earliest dateable letter, the
Arabic language Maqâlat al-tawthîqiyya wa risâlat al-tawhîdiyya (“Statement
of Certainty and Treatise on Proclaiming God’s Unity”), was completed roughly
at the time that the tomb was nearing completion in 1026/1618.48 Its text deals
primarily with esoteric aspects of advanced Sufism which, along with its lan-
guage of transmission, suggests that it was not intended for consumption by less
advanced members on the path.
Taking as his starting point the proclamation of God’s unity embodied in the
statement of witnessing, lâ ilaha illâ Allah (“there is no god but God”), Fuʾâdî
demonstrated how each of the letters in this statement, which includes five alifs
(), five lâms (), and two hâ’s (), referred to particular meanings for various

stages of the path. Perhaps tellingly, he addresses the audience directly, stating,
“O my brother, seeker of the highest stages of the path, know that I was among
the people of exoteric knowledge [once] . . . Hear from me an esoteric interpreta-
tion (taʾwîl) [for these letters].” He goes on to explain that the twelve letters of
the tawhîd formula break down in such a way that the five alifs represent the five
pillars of Islam, while the lâms represent the five graces (altâf) of God granted
to the believer through the mastery of the exoteric aspects of the path, and the
two hâʾs represent the guidance of belief (al-hidâyah al-iʿtiqâdiyya) and guid-
ance of action (al-hidâyah al-ʿamaliyya).49 In these types of writing, some might
read the lingering influence of the messianic Hurûfî movement on the Anatolian
Sunnî and Sufi landscape centuries after its collapse.50
Fuʾâdî then launches into a discussion of how he joined the order and began
pursuing a different stage of the process at a more esoteric level. As a seeker
proceeds on the path, an additional interpretation for the meanings of the Arabic
letters of the tawhîd takes its place alongside the first one. In this interpretation,
the five alifs represent the first five stages of the Halveti path of the atvâr-ı sabʿa
(the seven levels), in the form of attaining the various stages (maqâm). These
include conquering the carnal soul (nafs) and its negative attributes (sifât-ı
dhamîma); the stage of the heart (qalb), in which additional vices are conquered;
the two stages of the soul (rûh) and secret (sirr), in which praiseworthy attributes
are mastered; and, when these are complete, the stage of the hidden secret (sirr
al-khafî), which brings the seeker to the brink of the most advanced levels of
the mystical path. In turn, the five lâms represent the five graces of God that
accompany each level of success that the seeker attains in passing through the
stages by achieving the necessary goals. Finally, the two hâʾs represent what
Fuʾâdî calls “the two essences” (huwiyyatayn): the fixed (mutlaqa) essence,
and the pervading (sâriyya) essence. These two advanced stages are revealed to
the seekers only after they complete the aforementioned first five stages on the
path.51
The remainder of the treatise is given over to explaining how to approach
these advanced stages, with Fuʾâdî drawing heavily on the early Ottoman scholar
ʿAbdurrezzâk al-Kâşânî’s Istilâhât as-sûfiyya as a primary source for explaining
the concepts that the dervishes must learn. However, he also shows his intel-
lectual breadth by quoting from the works of authors like Akşemseddîn Hamidî
Çelebî (şeyhülislâm under Sultan Mehmed II), Cemâl el-Halvetî, and the poetry
of Mevlânâ Celâleddîn Rûmî and ʿAbd al-Rahman Jâmî among others. He con-
cludes the treatise with a warning not to reveal this information to anyone who is
not also in an advanced stage of mystical progression, as those who are not may
be prone to censure insofar as they understand anything at all. Since those at the
exoteric level of understanding remain at a stage of ignorance on the mystical

path, they must not immediately be privy to discussion on these matters. But tell-
ingly, he also warns the potential censurer who does consult the tract that they
do not understand the issues involved, and should refrain from causing trouble.52
Thus, the tone of this warning indicates that the treatise was intended for at least
a limited circulation among a wider audience to assist them in their own mystical
endeavors (and therefore prone to falling into the wrong hands). Its compara-
tive success among the limited circle for which its circulation was intended (a
Nakşbendî dervish over three centuries later recopied it, among others) suggests
that Fuʾâdî had sensed a critical gap that needed to be filled after the disruptions
that accompanied the turn of the tenth/sixteenth century.
Yet in contrast to the material of the Risâlat al-tawthîqiyya, Fu’âdî’s other
works tend towards assisting beginners rather than aiming at the upper levels
of mystical contemplation. One reason for this grew out of his hagiography’s
admonition that the path cannot be undertaken successfully without the guidance
of a shaykh. If pressed, Fu’âdî would undoubtedly argue for letting a shaykh
rather than written text do the guiding, especially once the advanced levels of the
mystical progression had been reached. Yet the extent of his surviving written
work points to a more substantial project intertwined with the hagiography and
the tomb complex: to educate the public about the order and its principles as a
way of sparking their interest in, and support of, their local sub-branch of the
Halveti order.
For this reason, he followed Risâlat al-tawthîqiyya with a much more
extensive project, Risâle-i muslihuʾn-nefs (“The Tract on Reform of the Carnal
Soul”). It begins with a story about how God brought man into the world of
existence, stating that when he did, he created him with two parts: the soul (rûh)
and the carnal passions (nefs). When he brought them both into existence within
man, God asked the soul who He was, and the soul promptly replied: “You are
my Lord; there is no God but You.” As a result, God accepted the soul imme-
diately and sent it down to earth to take residence in man. However, when He
addressed the carnal passions with his question, the carnal soul was insolent and
refused to respond. To cleanse the nefs of its evil urges, God sent it to roast in
hellfire for 700 years, and then brought it back and repeated his question. The
nefs persisted in its defiance, so God returned it to the fire for another 700 years.
Broken at last, the nefs finally gave the appropriate response and was allowed to
take up its place in mankind, having undertaken the necessary discipline to break
it of its negative qualities. The moral of the story was that the soul and carnal
passions coexist within every person; thus, the duty of every seeker is to root out
the negative attributes of the latter in favor of the good qualities of the former.
Nevertheless, not all the information should be revealed to a potential audi-
ence of novices at this point. Fuʾâdî warned that if someone were to ask why God

created these negative attributes in people, they should follow the example of the
Prophet, who responded to a woman who asked him the same question with the
evasive answer, “it was indicated to me [thus],” since this is a question whose
answer was reserved for those at advanced stages of the path. This tactic served
the dual purpose of catching the audience’s attention and developing their inter-
est by sparking their curiosity about one of the basic questions of existence; that
is, what is the root cause of evil in the world? In the end, the work encouraged a
desire to initiate the mystical process to learn more about these issues.53
In discussing the first two stages of the Halveti path of the “seven levels”
(atvâr-ı sabʿa), Fuʾâdî outlined the various vices that aspiring dervishes must
avoid in order to proceed to higher levels of mystical understanding. It is strik-
ing, however, that unlike in the Risâlat al-tawthîqiyya, he does not explain
these in a technical way. As he remarks in his introduction to the work, which
discusses his reasons for writing the text, in addition to providing the “hook”
narrative described in the previous paragraph, he felt there was a need for a new
contribution on these issues:
On account of its being necessary to give great struggle and attention on the point
of the carnal soul, while this poor one . . . Dervish ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî . . . was the
servant of the dervishes on the prayer-rug of the recourse of all the people of
Shaykh Şaʿbân Efendi . . . I explained and taught orally to the trustworthy seekers
in the place of guidance the stages of the soul and the attributes of the soul, both
praiseworthy and blameworthy. In order to make it easy to remember and know,
I organized the steps and names of each of them one by one into poetic segments,
with the sign and favor of the soul full of inspirations of the noble lord [Şaʿbân],
with divine blessing. I had [also] explained and recalled the seven praiseworthy
or blameworthy attributes in those poetic segments.54
This poetic composition was a rhyming couplet that was easily memorized by
his audience to transmit to others.55 But by itself it proved insufficient, as it gave
rise to other questions about the specifics of the information transmitted. So
Fuʾâdî reacted to the challenge posed by his audience: he wrote this new treatise
aimed at giving them the necessary specifics to understand the finer points of the
Şaʿbâniye path. Deferring to his audience’s needs, he used a simple Turkish that
eschewed overly eloquent constructions.
This step did not mean that Fuʾâdî was fully comfortable with the concept
of providing aspiring novices with a do-it-yourself manual, however. He issued
a strong warning, spread over several pages, aimed at dissuading the undertak-
ing of the path without the guidance of a proper shaykh. He makes an effec-
tive analogy, likening the person who learns about Sufism only from books to

someone who learns the Arabic language only from the books of grammarians.
While they might be able to understand parts of speech and the construction
of the language, when placed in an environment with people who have been
trained properly by a teacher, he will mangle the language in speaking, making
“clucking sounds” like a chicken that are unintelligible to actual speakers.56 In
the process, their ignorance would be exposed. Fuʾâdî also referenced his own
training with Abdülbâkî Efendi and Muhyiddîn Efendi, where he experienced
mystical states at the more advanced levels that could not be expressed in spoken
language, much less a written one.57
Fuʾâdî had to stress this, for otherwise the very act of writing and using texts
could slide into the same ideological trap into which his opponents among the
Kâdızâdelis58 had fallen. Reading books that discuss the problems of Sufism was
not enough to guarantee the readers the solutions that they sought, and Fuʾâdî
pointed out that the Prophet himself had said, “[first] the companion, then the
road” (al-rafîq thumma at-tarîq), along with “he who has no shaykh has no
religion” (man lâ shaykh lihi lâ dîn lihi) and “the shaykh is to his people as the
prophet is to his community” (al-shaykh fî qawmihi kaʾl-nabî fî ummatihi).59
Conveniently, these Prophetic traditions argued for caution about the logic
employed by those attempting to eliminate the influence of Muslim saints:
But some unaware people say, “a guide and shaykh from among the race of
mankind is not necessary; everyone’s [true] shaykh is the Qurʾan. It is sufficient
merely to follow the noble Qurʾan and act in accordance with the noble law to
arrive at the truth.” There is truth [in] that position, but it is the lowest position
of the beginners among the pious ones. It is not appropriate for the intelligent
believer that he should remain at the lowest level. The highest level is knowing
God in actions, characteristics, names and essence in complete witnessing . . .
This position is not obtained solely by exoteric knowledge and the study of
books! The truth is that the noble Qurʾan is the guide of the community and the
shaykh of the Sunnis – But it is not the nature of everyone to obtain exalted states
and divine perfections solely by following the Qurʾan without a perfected guide
who is from the race of mankind . . .60
In making this statement, Fuʾâdî appeared to be on slippery ground. Modern

scholars might find themselves more in sympathy with his opponents, who
appear to be opening up religious action and righteousness to anyone who can
understand the Qurʾanic injunctions. However, Fuʾâdî also employed a medical
metaphor from Najm al-Dîn al-Râzî’s (d. 654/1256–57) Mirsâd al-ʿibâd (“The
Path of God’s Bondsmen”)61 to illustrate why everyone needed a proper guide
to understand religious issues. After all, no one would entrust his life to a doctor

who had trained only with books on remedies without having studied first with
someone more experienced who had taught unspoken elements of the profes-
sion that books could not. Indeed, modern medical training is based on exactly
this principle in the form of residencies and internships! By linking the study of
complex religious and mystical issues with this model, Fuʾâdî seized the oppor-
tunity to attack an ideological foundation of the growing Kâdızâdeli by arguing
that without proper training people should not take it upon themselves to dictate
social policy through their own personal interpretations of religion. Of course,
Fuʾâdî does not follow an innovative ideology in privileging face to face oral
transmission of the values and practices of the order over the written word, or
in restricting control over religious interpretation to elites in society. This dates
back to the origins of Prophetic Tradition itself (if not earlier). Yet this extensive
discourse raises a thorny question for the audience of Fuʾâdî’s time: why, then,
produce a written work at all?
Fu’âdî answered by saying that while the great masters of mysticism did not
need to look at books in order to benefit from them in giving their guidance, they
did read them “to correlate their own mystical states with the mystical states of
other perfected ones, to speak and converse with their spiritual presence in the
world of meaning and the unseen, and to be spiritually and secretly purified.”62
What Fuʾâdî may have left unspoken was that this could be interpreted as his
wanting to leave a legacy whereby future generations of the Şaʿbâniye branch
of the order could access his spiritual presence and guidance. Another reason for
writing the work is, however, more clearly stated:
While the esteemed shaykhs and noble scholars have pleasant and excellent
books and tracts pertaining to the soul and the characteristics of the soul . . .
they did not show consideration to the stages of the seven levels (atvâr-ı sabʿa),
and they arranged and explained with another pleasant [type of] organization
and with another means of consideration that was unrestricted or haphazard
(ʿalâʾl-itlâq wa kayfa mâ ittifaqa).63 The noble one who expressed the level of
the stages did not mention each level according to this format, or at the point that
he mentioned the levels, he did not mention the seven attributes along with the
names of the characteristics of the soul according to the organization mentioned
in these poetic couplets . . . and they chose to summarize or abridge considerably.
Although abridgment is desirable, in expressing the praiseworthy and blamewor-
thy characteristics of each stage of each level of the soul . . . [and] in distinguish-
ing with close examination every position and every level, and in being detailed
and by inclusion of an explanation, making it easy and beneficial for the seeker
and traveler on the path is intended . . . The guidance and process of guiding in
the honorable silsile . . . of Şaʿbân Efendi and his pleasant principles up until

now is according to this path, and this letter of ours was brought forth to gather
together and explain [it] according to this means by being a friendly exposition
(hasb-ı hâl) of these points and meanings.64
In other words, Fuʾâdî needed a work that was more accessible to the audience of
early eleventh/seventeenth-century Ottomans. Earlier works had been produced
in a language or manner of expression that was not accessible to most Turkish-
speaking people, or were arranged in a way that did not fit the Halveti teachings
that had been passed down through Şaʿbân and his successors. In aiming for a
middle path between arbitrarily abridged discussions and excessively detailed
works that would be inaccessible to all but the most advanced scholars, Fu’âdî
likened his work to a travel guide carried by people such as merchants that
detailed the way-stations on the roads they took.
Fuʾâdî demonstrated how to tie this new presentation of the seven stages of
the soul to the principles of the Halveti order: through the establishment of basic,
everyday practices that novices could follow to prepare themselves for mystical
training. For instance, Fuʾâdî advocated five practices in a conscious echo of the
five ritual pillars of Islam. First, the novice should not eat too much, for filling
up would disrupt the elemental composition of the body in favor of fire, raising
the human and carnal passions to the point where they interfered with the “fire
of divine love.” Fuʾâdî complained here that too many novice dervishes failed
at even this most basic of practices. Yet interestingly, the emphasis here is on
moderation; Fuʾâdî did not want the potential seeker to go too far in the opposite
direction either. Shunning the extreme asceticism known to earlier generations
of Halveti saints like Cemâl el-Halvetî or İbrâhîm-i Gülşenî, he argued that
the best condition lies in the dervish being neither overly sated nor completely
hungry.
Related to this discussion was the third of the five requirements, which was
to limit one’s amount of sleep – a problem if one had overeaten! In an order that
placed a high priority on the interpretation of dreams, too much sleep would lead
to neglect and an inability to remember details critical for interpretation. Fuʾâdî’s
second and fourth requirements were also related; namely, to avoid speaking
and mixing with others as much as possible, and to seek solitude. Social activity
would require doing many of the things proscribed by these recommendations.
Furthermore, for the historian, this discussion indicates the degree to which
Fuʾâdî’s audience had active social lives that the requirements of the Halveti
path consciously challenged. As for the fifth requirement, it was to be engaged in
remembrance of God at all times, preferably through the vocal zikr of the name
of God with which a dervish had been charged by his shaykh. Yet even here
Fuʾâdî enjoined moderation: he warns against going to extremes with vocal zikr

and counsels restraint in its practice, perhaps as a response to criticisms leveled
at some Sufi orders.65
After discussing this initiation process, Fuʾâdî examined the vices to be
avoided in the first two stages of conquering the “commanding soul” (nefs-i
emmâre) and “resisting soul” (nefs-i levvâme). The two groups differed from
each other: the first set of vices represented passions of the carnal soul run
amuck, while the second group were vices that appeared when the obvious
attributes of the carnal soul had been subdued, but were still manifesting resist-
ance in the inner consciousness of the seeker. Each of the two groups was further
composed of seven specific vices, and in order to combat them, the seeker’s goal
was to exchange these vices for their corresponding virtues on the later stages
of the path. For example, the vice of pride (kibir) had to be combated with the
virtues of humility (huzûʿ) and modesty (tevâzuʿ). However, things were not
always quite so simple. Virtues could become vices, such as in the case of people
who become too impressed with their own humility and modesty, and fell into
other traps of pride and self-conceit.66
What probably caught the attention of the audience, however, was not the
technical part of the discussion. Rather, building on his experience in hagiography
writing, Fuʾâdî mixed stories with each of his key points as a way of illustrating
them. These interspersed narratives ranged from explanations of Prophetic tradi-
tions to apocryphal narratives and even folktales. A good example is Fuʾâdî’s
illustration of the best way to avoid falling into the trap of pride. He started by
explaining the background context behind the hadith, “verily God most High
loves kindness in all affairs” (inna Allah Taʿâlâ yahabbu al-rifq fîʾl-amr kullihi),
and explained that according to a work he had consulted, Meşârıkuʾl-envâr
(“The Places of the Rising of the Lights”), the Prophet was once accosted by a
Jewish scholar who wished to defeat him in theological debate.67 The Prophet’s
wife, ʿÂʾishah, watched from behind a curtain as the Jewish scholar proceeded
to behave insolently towards Muhammad, but Muhammad never wavered in his
friendly demeanor. When the man had left, ʿÂʾishah, thinking that her husband
had gotten the worst of the encounter by not standing up for himself, asked why
he had behaved in this way. He responded by saying that since he had behaved
properly and his detractor had not, he had in fact triumphed in the encounter.
The audience would quickly have made the connection between the kibir
(overweening pride) of the Jewish scholar to the anti-Sufi agitators of their own
time. Perhaps more moving still is the following story that Fuʾâdî added:
God most High, to teach and test Moses, said, “O Moses, find an insignificant
and despicable thing from among the whole of creation and bring it to me, such
that at the level of creation a more insignificant and despicable [thing] than it

shall not exist. [So] Moses found a mangy dog . . . that [all of] creation despised.
Thinking that there wasn’t a meaner and more despicable thing than this, he took
it to the mountainside. As they were walking, God gave that dog a voice, and
he said, “Moses! Where are you taking me and forcing me to go?” As soon as
[Moses] said, “I’m taking you and forcing you to go to the mountainside to God
Most High,” [the dog] said, “O interlocutor of God, how can you take and make
me go into the presence of the Lord of the Worlds and the Exalted House in this
state of meanness and lowness?” When Moses knew what had come [down] on
his head, and reflected on his own soul with the rejecting of inattentiveness, and
witnessed [his] state, he removed the leash that he had put around the neck of
the dog and put it around his own neck. When he came to the mountain, he said,
“O Lord, I went around all of creation and however insolent I might have been,
in the end I couldn’t find anything lower and more despicable than myself . . .”
God [then] preached to Moses . . ., “I knew that dog was [appearing to be] more
abject than his soul, and had you brought him to me, I would have removed you
from the record of prophecy!”68
Other stories illustrating vices include that of a “black Arab” in the city of
Cairo, who is humiliated by a young boy when his greed (hırs) for sweets leads
him to let the boy ride him around in the marketplace like a donkey. In the end,
he found himself rewarded with oats and grass instead. This is followed by a
story about a conversation between a dervish and Satan, in which Satan explains
that the one thing more wicked than himself is a person whose envy (hased) is
so great that he asks Satan to kill his wealthier neighbor’s donkey out of spite.
He later discovered that his neighbor’s wife had been instructed to give half
the profit the donkey brought to his own family. Another narrative relates how
the prophet Moses, after killing a person in the land of Egypt, had to learn to
conquer his anger (gazab) with the help of the prophet Shuʿayb. Afterwards, he
was tested by a wayward sheep who frustrated Moses by not allowing his capture
for several days. Only when Moses proved able to contain his anger and show
forgiveness to the sheep was he then guided to the gift of prophecy by God.69
Such narratives illustrated, for a diverse audience reflecting various levels of
knowledge, the traps of the carnal soul that every seeker on the path had to avoid.
By placing the doctrine and practice of the Halveti into accessible narratives, we
witness how Sufi leaders like Fuʾâdî sought to broaden Ottoman communities’
access to Sufi precepts.
Concluding his discussion on the lowest levels of the carnal soul, Fuʾâdî once
again raised the distinction between şeriʿat and tarikat (meaning, the exoteric
scholar versus the Sufi) interpretations of actions. Once again, he addressed the
issue by means of a story:

A dervish of one of the noble [Sufi masters], while carrying [his master’s] staff
out in front of his horse, and walking along, saw a single grape on the ground.
When he picked it up and ate it, the noble [master] said to the dervish, “what did
you just do?” As soon as the dervish said that he had picked up and eaten a single
grape, thinking that it was an unimportant thing, he said to the dervish, “what a
pity that you are a dervish . . . [supposedly] giving extreme importance to eti-
quette, and avoiding the needs of the blameworthy attributes . . . If you deem one
grape unimportant, then it [might as well be] one thousand!” In reality, it is like
this, because these sorts of things are acceptable in the şeriʿat, but not acceptable
in the tarikat, because the noble one placed importance on guidance, and [failing
to follow the rules of the order] is a breach of etiquette. Now, however much the
trustworthy dervish abstains from types of disobedience to the şeriʿat, he needs
to give that much time and importance to avoiding also those things which are
breaches of etiquette in the tarikat . . .70
The point of the discussion is simple: when the dervishes took on the responsi-
bilities of pursuing the mystical path, they had to attune themselves to the most
minute aspects of their conduct and actions. They superimposed a new set of
laws and restrictions over and above those imposed by Islamic tradition itself;
these new laws were to be tied closely to the guidance of a perfected shaykh.
Once the basic vices had been conquered, the dervish faced a second set of
more subtle vices that also had to be conquered. The problem with the vices of
these “carnal desires within the conscience” was that they were often difficult
to recognize, which was why the guidance of a master became increasingly
important during this stage. Many of the vices treated here, such as vanity
(ʿucb), desire to subjugate (kahır), and blaming others (levm) could ironically
result from success on the first stages of the path, as the dervish felt himself
spiritually ascending above the mass of ordinary people. Without the careful
oversight of a guide, these traps that rose from within the mind to disrupt the
spiritual advancement of the seeker could cause them to fall back to the begin-
ning of the path; these vices were ultimately derived from those at the lowest
levels of advancement. It was probably not lost on Fu’âdî or his audience that
this collection of vices often mirrored accusations made against their Kâdızâdeli
opponents.
Another prominent problem that Fuʾâdî and other Halveti guides recog-
nized in trying to keep their dervishes in line was the blameworthy attribute of
“revelry” (ʿişret). While the Sufi path enjoined quiet and solitude as the preferred
state of existence, many novices also relished the social activity that the Sufi
community provided for communal meals and conversation. Since interaction
was in and of itself capable of generating negative attributes and feelings, it was

a serious struggle for both shaykh and dervish alike to get past this vice.71 Note
also the hagiographical connection, for it was this very reason that led Şaʿbân
Efendi to express nervousness about his companions’ being drawn to the zikr
recitations of the Halveti order with Hayreddîn Tokâdî so many years before.
Once the seeker moved beyond the first two phases of the path, the goal of the
process changed from avoiding negative attributes in favor of personification of
positive ones. Here, however, Fuʾâdî cautions that too many novices seek to rush
the process after their struggles with the negative elements inherent in the carnal
soul. As a result, no one should be allowed to go forward from this point without
consulting a qualified individual who could properly judge these states. Yet in so
doing, Fuʾâdî also informs us more fully about the reasons for the composition
of this work, along with the means by which his contemporaries were accessing
Sufi ideas:
O seeker, be you on whatever level or at whatever station, if you want to know

whether or not you have struggled on your mystical journey, or if you have
favor, or if you have moved on to become [one of] the people of the state, make a
presentation to a perfected guide and noble one with complete submission, trust-
worthiness, and seriousness. If you cannot find [such a person], then look at his
books and tracts full of perfection and the state, [which] stir up mystical knowl-
edge and truth, and listen and understand with full comprehension their words
pertaining to the state and perfection in their guidance . . . Look in their mirror
by this means, until you see all of your states in the mirror of their attributes, and
know your good qualities and faults as they are. If you have a fault, you should
correct it, because how can seekers perfect a station, [if they] become conceited
with lack of knowledge, thinking “I became [one of] the people of the states,” and
remain deficient and ignorant? In the end, you’ll obtain this state and meaning in
the attribute of detailing of knowledge which is explained, and you’ll benefit.72
In this admonition, Fuʾâdî confesses the important role that books and tracts
had come to have in Ottoman Sufi contexts. This represented an admission that
the perfected guide to disciple ratio had reached a level in which there weren’t
enough guides to go around – this explains more fully his warnings about
imposters looking to fill the gap. The goal of the tracts Fuʾâdî was producing
was to provide a temporary stand-in for the perfected guide in situations in which
one was not available, or if the seeker could not obtain the one on one training
that marked the ideal mystical relationship. In other words, why should a seeker
be limited in his or her pursuit of mystical knowledge simply because a mysti-
cal guide hadn’t emerged yet? Even without having a guide present, one could
still make progress by tapping into the store of knowledge that the great guides’

written works represented in the hope of completing the full process later when
the individual could gain proper access to a shaykh. While an imperfect, or even
potentially troubling situation, by Fuʾâdî’s time, he had sensed that having aspir-
ing novices making imperfect progress on the path would be preferable to their
making no progress at all. Perhaps his own erratic path through multiple guides
earlier in career contributed to this outlook!
As the seekers tried to acquire virtues and avoid the trap of vices they thought
they had defeated during earlier stages of the path, backsliding became a con-
stant worry and underscored the need for assistance beyond the reading of works
alone. In particular, Fuʾâdî stressed this in his section on the virtue of enduring
suffering (tahammül):
When the people curse and get angry [at the seeker], by not knowing their own
state, fault, and ignorance, they do not protect the zeal of God and the zeal of the
path, [the seekers] are attracted to the powers of the carnal soul and the passion
of the deceptive multiplicity . . . [T]o be one in the face of blame and praise, and
to choose to be criticized is to choose poverty and the abandonment of the world
with asceticism and piety, meaning that when [the dervish] abandons sumptuous
clothes and the esteem of the people, dons the cloak and headgear, and enters
the path and state of the impoverished dervishes, it is enduring the curses of the
fanatics and censurers and the uneducated ones without knowledge of the state of
the shaykhs and dervishes, and not taking offense at their words.73
Once again, one of the greatest threats to the progress of the seekers on the path is
the growing power of anti-Sufi critics; all devotees of the order have to be aware
of this danger to avoid being deterred from the path.
Maintaining the order’s numbers and base of support was important to
Halveti leaders like Fuʾâdî by the time he wrote this work. With the rising power
of Kâdızâde Mehmed and others like him that threatened many Ottoman Sufi
orders with accusations of innovation and corruption, rallying all levels of a Sufi
order’s following to close ranks against the threat was of critical concern. It is
perhaps instructive that another of Fuʾâdî’s shorter tracts, the Risâle-i gülâbiye
(“Rose-Water Treatise”),74 was aimed specifically at dervishes entering the third
and fourth stages of the Halveti path and seeking to master virtues. The text drew
on a metaphor expressed in one of Mevlânâ Celâluddîn Rûmî’s couplets from the
Mesnevî about the scent of roses and rosewater. Fuʾâdî taught that far too many
dervishes failed to stay on the path and slipped back into worldly pursuits once
experiencing some form of divinely granted ecstatic state in later stages, based
on their frustration at being unable to repeat the experience.75 Perhaps recall-
ing his own experience temporarily slipping off the path after the death of his

first guide, Abdülbâkî Efendi, Fuʾâdî encourages his audience to keep seeking
advancement, and concludes his presentation with an anecdote of how the first
in the line of shaykhs in the Halveti silsile, Hasan al-Basrî, defeated the censure
of his opponents at the court of the Umayyad caliph ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzîz (d.
101/720) on the matter of predestination (qadar) by offering a persuasive reply
and standing firm in the face of the criticism. As a result, the caliph ʿUmar reaf-
firmed his fervent support for him.76
Perhaps more poignant in this regard is the fact that Fuʾâdî substitutes the
attribute of “anxiety” (gam) for “action” or “performance” (ʿamel) as one of the
praiseworthy attributes to be attained during the fourth stage of the path, that of
the “tranquil soul” (nefs-i mutmaʾinne). In contradistinction to the title of this
latter stage, the attribute of “anxiety” seems to imply anything but tranquility.77
Perhaps realizing the intentionality of his substitution, Fuʾâdî was at pains to
inform his audience that the anxiety to which he refers is not the type of anxiety
connected with worldly occurrences and problems. It was an anxiety born of the
possibility of slipping back into ignorance or neglect of the path, through either
laziness or seduction back into the realm of worldly affairs. For the true seeker
on the path, such a state would be without remedy and would accompany the
seeker for the rest of his life.78 Attempting to confront this anxiety in a construc-
tive manner was an important point for the wavering seeker, and it was perhaps
no coincidence that the copyist of Fuʾâdî’s work chose to reinforce the point
further. In the margin of the manuscript, he added a passage from another of
Fuʾâdî’s works discussing how the stage of the “tranquil soul” was a dangerous
time for dervishes; they were prone to fall into laziness and an attenuation of
their struggles to advance.79
An indication of how successful Fuʾâdî’s didactic projects became is the
existence of another tract entitled the Risâle-i sadefiye (“Mother-of-Pearl
Treatise”). This brief work reiterated the basic points about the blameworthy
attributes of the nefs-i emmâre, along with an enumeration of the seven stages
of the Halveti path that he had discussed in the Risâle-i muslihuʾn-nefs. The
first several folios were written entirely in verse, indicating that the treatise
sought to provide a brief summary that could be easily memorized for public
oral recitations. However, he includes several short anecdotes as well. One of
these deals with Fuʾâdî’s own dream of having met the second caliph, ʿUmar b.
al-Khattâb (d. 23/644), and listened to him deliver a sermon in a great mosque.
Breaking with his usual pattern, Fuʾâdî described this mystical experience
entirely in Arabic. In the dream, he realized who the preacher was only after
asking the person sitting next to him. When he turned to look, he saw ʿUmar
lecturing the audience to beware the tricks of the carnal soul, Satan’s calls to
lead them astray and to struggle to replace their blameworthy characteristics

with praiseworthy ones.80 Note that the caliph took the role of a mosque preacher
(vâʿiz) in the dream, a sort of anachronism reflecting the growing importance
of this position in the era’s religious politics for both Halvetis and Kâdızâdelis
alike.
Despite the fact that these works are not original, Fuʾâdî’s subsequent
reworking of his own writings focused predominantly on redacting some of the
ideas in the longer introduction to the Risâle-i muslihuʾn-nefs. This indicates
that he saw value in providing abridged sections of this text to different types of
audience. Both his dream and the stress on the problems inherent in the disci-
plining and care of the soul (especially the carnal soul) indicate that he felt his
role as a Sufi leader was to disseminate the message to a wider audience. By the
close of his second decade as head of the Şaʿbâniye order in Kastamonu, Fuʾâdî
had authored a considerable body of work aimed at educating his compatriots in
their own language about both the history of the order and its basic principles.
His growing success on this new front may have encouraged Fuʾâdî to take up
another ambitious project.
One of the foundations of the Halveti path was the Vird-i settâr, instituted by
Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî as a ninth/fifteenth-century litany for the zikr of later genera-
tions of Halvetis. By Fuʾâdî’s time, however, many dervishes lacked familiarity
with the Arabic-language meaning of the original. Moreover, they may even
have failed to grasp why it was important for Halveti ritual and practice in a
much changed social context. So at some point in 1038/1629, Fuʾâdî undertook
a commentary on the Arabic text of the Vird-i settâr, breaking it up piece by
piece and explaining each part in turn. He did not limit his exposition to this par-
ticular aspect of the Halveti path. Instead, subsumed it as the central section of
a five-part treatise entitled Makâle-i ferdiye ve risâle-i virdiye (“The Catalogued
Discourse and the Tract on the Recited Prayer”).81
Perhaps influenced by the earlier example of Muhyiddîn’s teacher, Mahmûd
Efendi, Fuʾâdî began the work on a defensive note by seeking to establish his-
torical and religious justifications for the clothing and headgear worn by Halveti
dervishes. Interestingly, the most prominent source he consulted to establish the
canonical respectability of the Sufi path was an Arabic tract, the Risâle-i nûriye
of Sultan Mehmed II’s favored Bayrâmî shaykh, Akşemseddîn Mehmed Efendi
(d. 863/1459?).82 The text of Akşemseddîn’s treatise, dealing with the canonical
respectability of Sufi clothing, was translated into Turkish and interspersed with
observations based on the teachings of Şaʿbân-ı Veli. This formed the founda-
tion for the defense of Sufi practices that initated the work.83 The problem of
defending Sufi garb and practices associated with it predated the era in which
Fuʾâdî lived, the only difference was that a new generation of censurers had to
be confronted.

Fuʾâdî saw the value of broadening the base of his order’s defensive ideology
to incorporate respected earlier Ottoman religious figures beyond Şaʿbâniye-
linked figures like Mahmûd Efendi. Moreover, when discussing certain tradi-
tions of the Prophet Muhammad that justified Sufi practices, Fuʾâdî indicates
some of the problems that Sufis encountered in their society by comparing them
with the ahl al-suffa (“People of the Bench”) of early Islam.84 Using commentary
provided by Ebûsuʿûd on the relevant Qurʾanic verses, he likens the events of
the Prophet’s time to the contemporary situation, in which dervishes were being
disrespected:
The great chiefs and elegant members among the unbelievers of the Quraysh
tribe, in order to sit with and get closer to the esteemed [Prophet Muhammad],
came into his noble presence and said: “O Muhammad . . . you are a master of
grace and states, gentle of action and condition. But when we come into your
noble presence, we don’t find you alone, we find [you] with a disagreeable group,
a company whose bodies are stinking with sweat and full of dirt, and whose
clothes are stinking and impure with this dirt, and because of this their scent
resembles the scent of a dervish house (tekke), and [they] are repulsive to us. If
you leave this type of people, all of us will come and we shall sit and speak with
you.”
This placed Muhammad in a difficult situation, in that he was bound to try and
convert as many people as possible to Islam. He considered the possibility of
heeding the Quraysh’s wishes by trying to spend part of his time with the ahl
al-suffa and part of it with the wealthy members of the Quraysh. Yet before
he could decide, God intervened with a command that he should not heed the
wishes of Quraysh:
[God] said: “O Muhammad! Do not leave the People of the Bench! Be always
steadfast with them, and stand firm, since they are resolved and continuous in
weeping, prayer and worship both day and night, and at the times of prayer
and all religious holidays.” On this point God most High expressed his zealous
nature, and he commanded . . . with the intent of establishing and giving impor-
tance once more to not leaving them, “make your soul (nefs) so resolved and firm
on the matter of not leaving them that you shall never be separated from them,
ever!”85
By likening the state of the ahl al-suffa to the Halveti dervishes who abandoned
high-class Ottoman society to live in an impoverished state, Fuʾâdî sought to
shield the behavior of his followers from criticism for their devotion. It likewise

forced his critics into the uncomfortable position of emulating the Meccan unbe-
lievers who tried to get the Prophet to reject his most pious followers.
After defending Sufi clothing and practice, the first chapter of Makâle-i
ferdiye ve risâle-i virdiye deals with the interpretation of dreams. Fuʾâdî stressed
here that the advancement of the seeker’s soul along the various stages of the
path requires the assistance of a guide in interpreting the seeker’s dreams, which
give clues to the direction individual paths should take. Quoting a work of Dâvud
Mahmûd al-Kayseri (d. c. 750/1350), the Muttaliʿ, he explained how the dream
world represented a meeting point between the spiritual and corporeal worlds.86
Only a trained guide could interpret the complex messages that emanate from
this arena, but he usually did not give an objective interpretation of a given
dream to its recipient. Instead, he gave a subjective interpretation that forced
the seeker to self-reflection. Fuʾâdî revealed to his audience an autobiographical
tidbit that even before he read these remarks of Dâvud Kayseri, he had experi-
enced this himself when he first joined the order at the age of twenty-seven under
Abdülbâkî Efendi.87 In addition, to illustrate for his audience just what he meant
by “subjective interpretation,” he gave an example of what once transpired
between his own guide Muhyiddîn and Şaʿbân:
Muhyiddîn Efendi related: “One day I told the esteemed master about a carnal
dream [that I had]. He said, ‘how nice!’ To make a long story short, when he
approved [of this], I said, ‘my lord, how can it be nice? It is carnal!’ He said, ‘its
goodness is this: it is said that the negative attributes in the mirror of your heart
and the purity of your body should be removed. If you had not seen that dream,
regression and deficiency would not have appeared in you. Since it appeared, go
and work [on solving it]!’” 88
The point of the narrative is that even a negative sign might result in positive
outcomes; thus, a seeker should not assume he can understand the import of
his visions, nor should he hide potentially embarrassing elements from his
guide.
Only after explaining these two fundamental pillars of Halveti practice
does Fuʾâdî turn to the centerpiece of the work: his commentary on the Vird-i
settâr. He stresses from the outset that the prayer is a critical part of the order,
and that every part of it has meaning and relevance for each seeker in rela-
tion to his station on the path. Suggesting some of the problems he sought to
address, Fuʾâdî insisted that devotees should never fall asleep or show neglect
in their concentration while listening to it, even if they could not under-
stand. Proper posture, style, and etiquette had to be followed when reading
the prayer, and any mystical states that occurred during its reading had to be

carefully monitored by the shaykh.89 Nevertheless, what is distinctive about
the commentary is its studied emphasis on certain elements within the text of
the Vird. Certain elements are glossed over quickly, with little more than a
basic definition of Arabic terms, while other phrases generate several folios of
discussion.
While the length of the text and complexity of its exposition make a full
accounting difficult, it is worth highlighting a few of Fuʾâdî’s more involved dis-
cussions to demonstrate which elements required special attention. It is perhaps
telling that nearly a seventh of the commentary (pp. 50a–57a) consists of an
explanation of the subtle points underlying just two verses in the Vird-i settâr.
The first, “glory be to you [God], we cannot serve you properly, O one who is
served,” is followed by several related ones, such as “glory be to you [God], we
cannot know you properly, O one who is known.”90 The first verse apparently
raised some key problems that Fuʾâdî worried could mislead seekers on the path.
The crux of the issue was maintaining proper belief, despite the ecstatic states
that the Sufi path could provoke in the seeker. Beginning with the time honored
distinction between prophecy given to the prophets (nübüvvet-i teşrîʿiye) and
that given to saints (nübüvvet-i taʿrîfiye), with the latter only achievable through
strict obedience to the framework laid down by the former, Fuʾâdî claimed that
the true Sufi saint will never deviate from Islamic religious law.91 The greatest
danger was that in the final stages of the path, the manifestations of God’s unity
to advanced seekers would place them in a dangerous position between the
rapture of divine unity (telvîn) and the need to maintain control of one’s senses
(temkîn). The successful seeker would recognize the need to chart a balanced
course between the two; sliding too far into ecstacy would lead to rejection of
religion (zendaka), while failing to achieve sufficient perception of the divine
unity (cehâlet) would rob the Sufi of the necessary experience to allow them
to guide others. The only way to avoid tipping the balance too far was to hew
close to the şeriʿat and never deviate from the basic pillars of Islam, even while
in a state of rapture.92 Note here Şaʿbân’s own correction of wayward followers
attested to in Fu’âdî’s hagiography, showing how his later work grew organi-
cally out of the former.
But the verse raised other problems for Fuʾâdî’s audience, for if the human
being could not serve God except in a deficient way, what would be the point
of serving him at all? Would one’s deficient attempts at worship therefore be
abrogated? These questions suggest that a hostile critique of the verse existed,
suggesting that the very foundations of Islamic worship were being dispar-
aged. From there, it was possible to argue that the Vird-i settâr posed a threat
in leading the Halveti devotees into unbelief. On this point, Fuʾâdî drew on his
former career as a jurist, and used the Fiqh al-akbâr of Abu Hanifa and its later

commentaries to demonstrate that despite man’s deficiencies, he must still obey
God to the extent that he is able.93
The suspicion that Fuʾâdî is once again focusing on the defense of his order’s
basic foundations here is confirmed by the stress on the second part of the formula,
dealing with not being able to know God properly. Fuʾâdî begins by citing Najm
al-Dîn al-Râzî’s description of how God’s scope is too great for the intellect
to comprehend, and even the greatest of Muslims were never able to maintain
their senses in the face of God’s awesome transcendence.94 This is followed by
a passage from Ibn al-ʿArabî’s Futûhât al-Makkiyya, in which he acknowledged
that some scholars, especially among the philosophers, found the statement to be
erroneous, foolish, or even a manifestation of unbelief. Therefore, Ibn al-ʿArabî
criticized scholars such as al-Ghazâlî who tried to defend its validity.95 Yet trou-
bling to some would be the fact that Abû Hanifa had apparently made the exact
opposite claim – that “we know God properly” – in his Fiqh al-akbâr. Since this
contradicted the basic sense of the phrasing in the Vird-i settâr, a danger arose
in which the audience felt challenged to choose between two respected Muslim
authorities. Fuʾâdî resolved the discrepancy, however, by explaining that the
“knowledge” (maʿrifa) to which the two statements refer is not the same thing.
The spiritual knowledge of God’s essence (ʿirfân-ı zât), which includes the
description of God’s attributes and his ninety-nine names, is what Abû Hanifa
referred to; these qualities are, of course, knowable. On the other hand, the true
nature of God’s essence (künh-i zât) is an unknowable thing, and it is to this that
the text of the Vird referred. Therefore, there is no real conflict between the state-
ments of jurists and the mystical text of the Vird-i settâr. Wavering seekers could
thereby avoid the potential for conflict between their adherence to the Hanafî
school and the principles embedded in the Halveti litany.96
All these discussions hint that hostile forces outside Halveti circles were
looking for ways to undermine the doctrinal foundations of the order. Fuʾâdî was
responding to them with this work by crafting a coherent defense which would
protect these texts from insinuations of unorthodoxy by the order’s enemies.
Thus, the commentary on the Vird-i settâr was aimed at a more intellectual audi-
ence who wanted to be informed of the best ways to defend their practices in
the theological arena of their times. The text is therefore not a minimalist com-
mentary on the Halveti prayer litany; it also offered tools by which the order’s
leadership could withstand the growing danger of Kâdızâdeli inspired attacks
challenging their legitimacy.
Further confirmation of this can be found in Fuʾâdî’s insertion of political
commentary into his discussion of the Vird. One recurrent theme invoked in
earlier works, such as the Menâkıb, was allusions to the lives, careers, and virtues
of the four Rightly-Guided Caliphs and their immediate successors. Here, over

a quarter of his commentary is given over to discussion of anecdotes about this
subject, based on the mention of the Rightly-Guided Caliphs and their attributes
in the litany of the Vird. At one point, during his discussion of references to
the first caliph Abû Bakr, Fuʾâdî addresses the virtue of compassion (şefkat) as
a touchstone of faith (îmân) by digressing into a story about how Moses once
asked God which group among his servants were most beloved to him. God
responded by saying, “if a thorn were to sink into the foot of a faithful servant
in the east, and if a faithful servant in the west were to apprehend his pain and
suffering, and his heart grieve and be pained with compassion for this particular
thing, the most beloved and dearest to me among all of my servants would be that
servant.” This remark needed further grounding for the contemporary audience,
and Fu’âdî interjected:
Let this be known also: if a tyrant without faith and lacking in generosity were
to oppress and torment unjustly a victim deserving of mercy and compassion,
the oppression of that tyrant is because of his lack of religion and his faith, or
it is on account of great weakness in his faith, since compassion [derives] from
faith . . . But now we live in a time, in the year 1040/1630–31, when if they were
to see this oppression face-to-face, unlike the thorn which hurt the foot of [the
person] in the west, the person who would show great compassion and whose
heart would ache for that victim would be rarely found. On account of this, very
few helpers of the oppressed remain.97
Although carefully worded to avoid specific mention of any particular person

or event, Fuʾâdî’s audience would readily have interpreted this comment as a
complaint against the hostility growing against them from official circles, and
an expression of political dissatisfaction with the prevailing situation. Moreover,
this dissatisfaction lurking behind anecdotes of the Rightly-Guided Caliphs went
beyond condemning the usual oppressions that had come to characterize much of
the Ottoman Empire. In fact, Fuʾâdî stated at one point that the reason he chose
to devote so much of his commentary on the Vird to the Rightly-Guided Caliphs
was to rebut the accusations of those who censured the Halveti order:
[T]he people who follow false ideas and vicious, unsolicited and unfounded
opinions are hostile to the knowledge that they do not know and to the people
of knowledge that they do not know. They do not beware of suspicion, slander
and thinking badly [of someone], by which someone who is canonically lawful
becomes an unbeliever, and that which is fixed in a sacred text become prohib-
ited in the noble law.98 They do not see and they do not know their own shame-
ful faults. Talking about what they do not know, and saying, “the origin of the

Halveti Sufis is Persia (ʿAcem),” they dare to make attribution to the evil sect
of the Shiʿa (rıfz) and other slander that is not in the essences or person of the
pious ones, God forbid and forbid again, and they make other baseless attribu-
tions. In particular, they do not look at the prayers, recitations and worship that
these [people] perform at all times, whether externally, internally, secretly or
openly . . . The creator of the Vird recited and recalled the four esteemed caliphs
and the honored companions in the noble prayer with praiseworthy and beauti-
ful attributes suitable to their noble honor and appropriate to the Book and the
Sunna, in order to incline to reference to righteousness and to prefer this state.99
By focusing on both the Vird litany and his own commitment to the description
of all four of the Rightly-Guided Caliphs, Fuʾâdî sought to deflect the problem-
atic notion that the order’s origins in the Persian east would tie it to the Shiʿism
of the Safavid Dynasty. Since a strong strain of anti-ʿAcemî criticism, present
in Ottoman circles throughout the tenth/sixteenth century, still lingered into
Fuʾâdî’s time, this strategy insulated the order and its followers from the accusa-
tions implied by those criticisms.100 It also alerted the audience that many of the
order’s detractors had made their accusations without even looking at any of its
founding principles, thereby rendering their opinions unjustified.
Fuʾâdî concluded his work with two chapters dealing with two critical ele-
ments of the Halveti path: the practice of seclusion (halvet) and the remembrance
of God through prayer (zikr). Both of these chapters perpetuate the defensive
tone of the work; each devotes much space to arguments deflecting anti-Halveti
attacks. In defending the practice of seclusion, Fuʾâdî divided the concept once
more into its şeriʿat and tarikat forms. The former was defined by the Arabic
term iʿtikâf (a form of retreat devoted to the assiduous worship of God), while
the latter is subsumed under the term halvet, from which the order took its name.
Fuʾâdî tied the withdrawal of the Prophet Muhammad for meditation in the cave
at Mount Hirâʾ to the story of the ostensible founder of the Halveti order, Pîr
ʿÖmer el-Halvetî, who also withdrew from society to meditate in the hollow
of a plane tree.101 Anti-Halveti polemicists, however, made a different analogy
by claiming that Halveti dervishes were following a practice identical to that of
Christian monks in a monastery, contravening the Prophet Muhammad’s injunc-
tion that there should be no monks in Islam. Fuʾâdî’s irritation at these claims
is evident in his discussion; he claims that understanding the difference between
the Sufi halvet and monasticism is as simple as opening a dictionary:
It isn’t like that; [this] statement is a lie and a false slander full of weakness! The
shaykhs say in the most exalted speech that there is monk-like behavior accord-
ing to the dictionary and the şeriʿat in the retreats that the dervishes perform

and in themselves. But it is not monk-like behavior according to the dictionary!
Monk-like behavior is specific to monks; it is certain that this state doesn’t exist
[among the] shaykhs and dervishes, like . . . fasting, and the wearing of sackcloth
and abandonment of eating meat, and other conditions. But this [is the reason
that] it is not monk-like behavior according to the şeriʿat: among the monks there
is no religion, sacred law of Islam or action according to the order, and although
they exert great struggle, it is not for God or for the sake of God (lillah wa fî
Allah değildir) . . . God’s noble statement, “those who struggle for our sake, we
shall guide them on our path,” is not absolute [in nature]. It is written with “for
our sake,” and it means, “those who struggle with respect to us.” Now, according
to this reading, as soon as there is no religion of Islam among them, and their
actions are not for God or for the sake of God, their struggles don’t benefit them
one bit. This is the original meaning of “monk-like behavior” that they speak
of.102
To simplify, since the Halveti custom of seclusion is grounded in Islamic prin-

ciples rather than those of Christianity, it is silly to link monks to Halveti Sufis
based on a superficial similarity in some of their practices. Fuʾâdî concluded
by condemning the simple-minded thinking that some scholars were applying
through these types of analogy, which resulted in unjust criticisms of Muslims
who were doing nothing wrong.103
The Halveti practice of recitation (zikr) was the fourth pillar upon which
the practice of the order was based. Here, opponents of the Halveti fell back
on centuries old arguments that the vocal zikr was not appropriate for worship,
and no form of movement should take place in conjunction with it. As a rebut-
tal, Fuʾâdî offered the example of the most orthodox of mystics, Junayd al-
Baghdâdî, considered among the most sober minded religious thinkers in Islamic
history. According to the relation of Jaʿfar b. Muhammad, Junayd defended the
practice of movement during the zikr on Mt Sinai when a Christian monk asked
him about it.104 Other complaints seem to revolve around whether the utter-
ance of the zikr could be anything other than the statement of tevhîd, meaning
“there is no god but God.” In response, Fuʾâdî cited the Qurʾanic verse, “O
you who believe, remember God frequently.”105 The Arabic term for “frequent
remembrance” (dhikran kathîran) in this verse implied multiple means of recol-
lection, a point backed up by Najm al-Dîn al-Râzî in his Qurʾanic commentary,
which Fuʾâdî cited in full. He did concede that the tevhîd recitation of “there
is no god but God” was the most appropriate form, especially for beginners on
the Sufi path – it allowed them to break away from the manifestations of mul-
tiplicity (kesret) that would otherwise distract them. However, this was not the
only form that zikr could take, especially as mystics reached the later stages of

the path.106 Fuʾâdî rested his case on the Halveti origin myth, in that the guid-
ance that the Prophet Muhammad offered to his son-in-law ʿAlî meant that the
practice of zikr followed by the order was derived from the most impeccable of
authorities.
Of course, such arguments were not enough for the ever present enemies of
the order, whose subaltern voice lurks behind the didactic lessons Fuʾâdî offered.
Periodically, their voices emerge from the text, such as when they cite a tradition
about the companion of the Prophet, Ibn Maʿsûd. He supposedly saw people
performing a zikr in the mosque, and his response was to accuse the practitioners
of innovation and eject them. Since the tradition was considered sound, Fuʾâdî
recognized the threat it could pose if applied by analogy to those who pursued
Halveti zikr rituals in the mosques. Arguments against Sufi practice also drew
on a second tradition in which the Prophet criticized his followers for calling out
loudly to God in their prayers; he told them there was no need to do so as God
was never far from them. To defuse the explosive potential of these otherwise
legitimate narratives, Fuʾâdî produced counter-traditions. In one, the Prophet
defended the practice of a vocal zikr as the closest thing on earth to the gardens
of paradise; this provided legal cover, as the Prophet’s opinion obviously out-
ranked that of Ibn Maʿsûd. Yet how was he to resolve the dilemma regarding
the contradictory statements of the Prophet himself? In this case, Fuʾâdî’s strat-
egy was to contextualize the tradition forbidding loud prayers. In his view, the
Prophet was responding to a specific situation rather than laying down a general
rule. The context for this remark occurred when the Muslims were on campaign,
so the Prophet feared that the enemy would hear them and learn their position if
they did not keep their voices down. Therefore, his injunction applied only to a
specific military situation, rather than denying the legitimacy of the practice in
general.107
***
By the time he completed his commentary on the Vird-i settâr some five years
before his death, we can speculate that ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî could look with some
degree of satisfaction on the progress that the Şaʿbâniye had made in the twenty-
five years since he had acceded to head of the order. Though Fuʾâdî may not
have been recognized by either contemporaries or modern observers as one of
the great figures of his era, it is hard to deny the sheer volume of his output and
his tireless initiatives in confronting serious problems for the order. He had con-
solidated an official narrative of Şaʿbân-ı Veli’s life, constructed a tomb complex
and an ideological defense of its value, and compiled a number of works that
sought to widen the public’s access to the teachings of the Halveti order. We can

only assume, given the results, that all three of these projects were successful.
Fuʾâdî’s career raises other questions that deserve further inquiry, however. He
is an unusually well-documented figure; a surprising number of his works have
survived to the present. Were there other versions of Fuʾâdî in other provincial
areas of the Ottoman Empire who defended their saints and produced works to
that effect?
Fuʾâdî’s activities suggest the tip of a broader populist trend that was taking
shape in the religious culture of Ottoman society from the eleventh/seventeenth
century onward. First, Fuʾâdî’s attempt to increase popular access to the teach-
ings of the Halveti order and Sufism in general, along with the ways in which
he conceived his project, indicate an important shift in early modern Ottoman
thought. We have seen that the Sufi writings of the ninth/fifteenth century, when
Halveti shaykhs first began to emerge in significant numbers, tended to write in
Arabic, thereby limiting their audience to those who had the proper background.
To some extent, this reflected earlier Sufism’s basic structure of a closely-knit
following surrounded by a much larger, casual group who lacked the will or
the capacity to pursue the mystical path. Earlier shaykhs found it wise to limit
esoteric knowledge to the inner circle, the most devoted members of the order,
for the mystical path was extraordinarily difficult to pursue even for the most
learned. Even Fuʾâdî himself wrote his hagiography in Arabic initially, with
an eye toward these formalities. Yet he soon rejected this pattern – why? Did
he recognize the impact of a later tenth/sixteenth-century movement toward
Turkish-language hagiographical literature that had begun to appear in İstanbul?
It is not out of the question, but another set of social dynamics may have been
forcing the change.
To wit, the urgency behind Fuʾâdî’s writings is never far from the surface,
as we have demonstrated. He broke with ideal mystical prinicples inherited
from earlier times because the social and political context of the early modern
Ottoman Empire demanded it. The Sufi orders that had formed out of the medi-
eval periods of Islamic history were coming under increased scrutiny by new
generations of religious thinkers who sought to rationalize and circumscribe the
diversity of practice that had marked the post-Mongol formation of the Ottoman
enterprise.
Contemporary historians of religion might dismiss Fuʾâdî’s works as
derivative versions of earlier, more magisterial statements of the philosophy
and practice of Islamic mysticism. This has a core of truth to it – no one,
Fuʾâdî himself included, would find a direct comparison between his works
and those of Ibn al-ʿArabî, Najm al-Dîn Râzî or Celâlüddîn Rûmî worthy of
serious consideration. But to assign value to historical works along these lines
misses important points. The goal of the Şaʿbâniye leader was to broaden

access to the order’s teachings and significantly expand its membership. It is
a mustering of a mystical esprit de corps that could combat the growing anti-
Sufi rhetoric of the time; a rhetoric that sought to mobilize the population in
the mosques against Sufism’s Ottoman infrastructure and leadership through
increasingly vitriolic sermons. Moreover, even though much of Fuʾâdî’s audi-
ence accessed this legacy via oral transmission, his works leave no doubt of
their intention. They are stocked with narratives and exemplary stories that
increase their entertainment value and accessibility to a general audience.
What we see here, in short, is the blossoming of a type of literacy movement
that aimed to educate the population so they could support their saints in an
increasingly divided religious and political atmosphere marked by crisis and
change.
Nowhere would these battles be more stubbornly fought than over the
Halveti practice of the semâʿ and devrân. In the concluding chapter, we will
examine how this struggle formed the backdrop for the frenetic activity under-
taken by Sufi leaders like ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî. Yet we must also grapple with one
final question that hovers over Fuʾâdî’s career and legacy. Given the significance
of his legacy to the Şaʿbâniye, why didn’t it attract more attention from his con-
temporaries and later historians?
Notes
1 MSV(T), p. 145. Griswold attributes the survival and recovery of the Ottoman state after
1015/1607 to this military genius who served under five different rulers; see GAR, pp.
132 and 211.
2 MSV(T), p. 146; it is interesting that Fuʾâdî’s father was also named Himmet Dede –
was there a family tie? Since Fuʾâdî makes no mention of what would have been a very
significant connection, we must assume that the two individuals are not the same.
3 The author here uses a title that expresses greater confidence in his position as head of
the order, as he penned this particular narrative sometime after 1027/1618, after heading
the order for nearly fifteen years.
4 Or alternatively, “among Easterners and Westerners alike.”
5 MSV(T), p. 146.
6 William Griswold suggested, in an e-mail to the author, that ʿÖmer Kethüdâ probably
died of old age. Thus, the myth of the murder had more to do with Nasûh Paşa’s fear-
some reputation for ruthlessly extorting revenues from those he persecuted; see also
GAR, pp. 210–11.
7 MSV(T), pp. 149–50; we understand from this that Fuʾâdî also believed the rumors
about Nasûh Paşa’s treachery toward his former master’s colleagues – a suspicion that
extended to thinking that Nasûh Paşa had his predecessor, the hero Kuyucu Murad Paşa,
poisoned so he could take his place; see GAR, p. 297, n. 3, and p. 298, n. 8.
8 MSV(T), p. 150.
9 See Figure 4 and ZD, insert between pp. 18 and 19.

10 ZD; Abdulkadiroğlu believes the ebced calculation adds up to 982/1574; see AKAK,
p. 113. While not out of the question, it relied on an unlikely possibility that the renova-
tion began before Murad III acceded to the sultanate in the final month of that year.
11 See KKE, p. 107 and MBEH, p. 152.
12 This explains why the mosque is known by both names in various works; see, for
example, AKAK, pp. 101–2 and KKE, p. 107. See also John J. Curry, “Defending the
Cult of Saints in 17th-century Kastamonu: Ömer el-Fuʾadi’s Contribution to Religious
Debate in Ottoman Society,” in Colin Imber and Keiko Kiyotaki (eds), Frontiers of
Ottoman Studies: State, Province and the West (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005), vol. 1, pp.
139–48.
13 In his correspondence with his shaykh, Murad III frequently makes reference to his
present inability to fulfill Şücâʿ’s demands, and begs his indulgence in delaying the
request; see SM-KM, fols 158a, 159a–b, 160b, and 165b–6a among others.
14 MSV(T), p. 151.
15 MSV(T), pp. 152–3.
16 MSV(T), p. 153.
17 MSV(T), pp. 162–3.
18 MSV(T), pp. 153–4; though Fuʾâdî’s argument does not reflect the fact that Muslim
scholars have not always agreed on what the idea of “consensus” (icmâʿ) represents.
See, for example, Joseph Schacht, An Introduction to Islamic Law (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1964), pp. 29–31 and 60–8 on how prominent scholars defined or limited who
could be included in the “consensus,” and Frederick Mathewson Denny, An Introduction
to Islam, 2nd edn (New York: Macmillan, 1994), pp. 198–9.
19 The fetvâs of Kâdıhân were extremely influential among Ottoman jurists; some schol-
ars claim that his more flexible, real-world approach to issues made him popular with
subsequent generations. He was also cited by other hard-line jurists seeking to criticize
various Sufi practices; for more on Kâdıhân and his legacy, see Th. W. Juynboll and Y.
Linant, “Kâdi Khân, Fakhr al-Dîn al-Hasan b. Mansûr al-Farghanî,” EI2, vol. 4, p. 377.
20 MSV(T), pp. 155–6.
21 MSV(T), pp. 157–8.
22 MSV, p. 86.
23 Previous work has linked Christian shrines devoted to certain saints with the Muslim
saint Khidr, beginning during the post-Manzikert era and reaching its height in the
seventh/thirteenth and eighth/fourteenth centuries; see Ethel Sara Wolper, “Khidr,
Elwan Çelebi and the Conversion of Sacred Sanctuaries in Anatolia,” Muslim World
90:3–4 (2000), 309–11. In a more recent work, Wolper argues that dervish and Christian
communities during the Seljuk and Mongol periods were never exclusive, and often
joined through shared mercantile and sacred spaces; see Cities and Saints: Sufism and
the Transformation of Urban Space in Medieval Anatolia (University Park, PA: The
Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), pp. 74–81.
24 KC-BT, pp. 92–5.
25 After summarizing his opponents’ arguments, Fuʾâdî stated, “they cannot distinguish
between the Sunnî mezheb and another false mezheb. They go to the mezheb of the
heretics and Hanbalis with this opinion of censure and heresy”; see MSV(T), p. 158. In
theory, he might be treading on dangerous ground by accusing one of the four accepted
legal schools in Sunnî Islam of trafficking in irreligious beliefs.
26 Najm al-Dîn Muhammad al-Ghaytî al-Shâfiʿî was a prominent tenth/sixteenth-century

Egyptian jurist from Alexandria, and given the prominence of tombs in the religious
life of Egypt, it is perhaps not surprising that Fuʾâdî chose to draw on this individual as
his source. For more on him, see ʿUmar Ridâ Kahhâlah, Muʿjam al-muʾallifîn: Tarâjim
musannifî al-kutub al-ʿarabiyya (Damascus: Matbaʿat al-Taraqqî, 1959), vol. 8, pp.
293–4. Kâtıp Çelebi was aware of several other works when he compiled his Keşfüʾz-
zunûn in the eleventh/seventeenth century, but does not mention this one, suggesting that
the work was not widely known; see KC-KZ, vol. 1, p. 336, and vol. 2, p. 1068. Fuʾâdî
described the work as a compilation of thirty-nine questions followed by answers, and
he cited materials from the work based on several of these.
27 Underscoring this point, the modern Turkish translation and interpretation of the
Türbenâme part of MSV, published by Muhammed Safi, omits this Arabic-language
part of the work entirely and skips directly to the next section; compare Safi, p. 153 with
MSV(T), pp. 158–61.
28 Al-Ghaytî may have been struggling with similar problems involving attacks on tomb
visitation in the Egyptian context; thus, Fuʾâdî recognized the utility of this source in
addressing his own problem.
29 Baki Tezcan suggests in his dissertation that ʿOsmân II was the first Ottoman sultan to
have been educated by a preacher, ʿÖmer Efendi. While we cannot ascertain ʿÖmer’s
political and religious leanings, there is evidence that links both ʿÖmer and ʿOsmân II
to a favorable view of what would later emerge as the Kâdızâdeli movement. In fact,
during the early years of his career, Kâdızâde Mehmed himself penned a tract on horses
and presented it to ʿOsmân II as a way of currying favor. This activity would have been
occurring at the same time Fuʾâdî was submitting the Risâle-i Türbenâme; see BKTZ,
pp. 186–94.
30 MSV(T), pp. 165–6.
31 MSV(T), pp. 166–7.
32 Probably referring to a timeframe in which the holders of fiefs were informed by the
sultan of their obligations toward a campaign or the treasury, meaning that they would
be able to determine remaining income available for discretionary purposes, such as
Fuʾâdî’s project.
33 MSV(T), p. 167.
34 Interestingly, Fuʾâdî would partially renege on these conditions after the tomb was com-
pleted in 1026/1618. He recorded in a defter the names and amounts contributed to the
building of the tomb over the course of its construction and had the scroll placed inside
the tomb itself. This way, he argued, it could serve as a record on the day of judgment
for those who had done good works. However, it was not presented as an open record
that anyone could have examined; see MSV(T), pp. 185–6.
35 MSV(T), p. 168.
36 AKAK, p. 114; the ebced numerical value adds up to the number 1020 in the last line,
which translates to the year 1611, the date when ʿÖmer Kethüdâ had initiated the
project.
37 MSV(T), pp. 170–2.
38 I have not found any additional records documenting the existence of this individual. He
was later promoted to the post of müteferrika, a military scribe for one of the Ottoman
elite regiments; he held the post at the time Fuʾâdî wrote the Türbenâme.
39 MSV(T), pp. 172–3.

40 SCLO, vol. 2, p. 286; Baki Tezcan also notes the near disaster at Ardabil that almost cost
the life of the Crimean Khan; see BKTZ, p. 196 and also CI, p. 77.
41 Fuʾâdî extols the virtues of his benefactor extensively in MSV(T), pp. 175–7, suggesting
apologetic aimed at protecting the tomb complex and its denizens from another benefac-
tor whose career did not end so successfully.
42 MSV(T), pp. 174–5. Fuʾâdî stressed the exalted lineage of this individual, who was
among the children of Seyyid İbrâhîm Tennûrî (d. 887/1481?), primary successor to
the Bayrâmiye shaykh Akşemseddîn whose tomb was located in Kayseri. His second
successor, Muslihuddîn b. ʿAttâr el-İskilibî, established himself in İskilip, and given
our knowledge of Abdülbâkî Efendi’s presence there, this suggests amicable relations
between the two orders. Evliyâ Çelebi commented on these Bayrâmiye shaykhs in his
descriptions of Kayseri and İskilip; see Buğday, Evliyâ Çelebis Anatolienreise, pp. 132
and 284.
43 For a brief and incomplete biography of Kûrşûncuzâde Mustafa Paşa, see SCLO, vol. 4,
pp. 388–9; he was also governor of Bosnia a third time from 1036/1627 to 1037/1628,
and again in 1041/1632 or 1042/1633. He died in battle during Sultan Murad IV’s cam-
paign against Baghdad in 1045/1636. Both Süreyyâ and Fu’âdî concur on his govern-
ship over Bosnia; see MSV(T), p. 178. For more on the importance of these events for
ʿOsmân II’s reign, see BKTZ, pp. 196–203.
44 The account is rather vague about where repairs and additions were made; see MSV(T),
pp. 177–80. However, the harem was most likely the small prayer room presently found
on the north side of the tomb, and the second gate was probably added on the east side
of the tomb where the inscription for Mustafa Paşa is located; see diagrams in ZD, insert
between pp. 18 and 19.
45 AKAK, p. 114; the ebced in the last line actually adds up to 1027/1617, suggesting that
the building might have been completed earlier.
46 ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî, Risâletüʾl-müsellesât er-reşâdî, Süleymaniye Lib., İstanbul, MS
Haci Mahmud Efendi 2287, fols 282b–3a. Fuʾâdî does not explicitly state what he is
referring to here, but the extortionate activities of the Sultan and his grand vizier, ʿAlî
Paşa, against some of the grandees of the empire who might have been friendly to the
Şaʿbâniye might be inferred. Also, the general reticence of key scholars to condone
ʿOsmân II’s attempt to have his brother killed may be at work; see BKTZ, pp. 99–100,
198, and 201. These possibilities might allow us to date this letter to 1029/1620 or
1030/1621.
47 For a historiographical analysis of ʿOsmân II’s reign and its implications for both early
modern and contemporary historians, see BKTZ, pp. 1–27.
48 This treatise exists in multiple copies scattered among different manuscript libraries in
İstanbul. The copy dating its completion to 1028/1618 can be found in OF-MT, fol. 16a,
mistakenly labeled in the Süleymaniye’s card catalog as Maqâlat al-tawashshaqiyya.
An identical second and better preserved copy that does not give the original date of
composition was made by a Nakşbendî dervish shortly before the establishment of the
Turkish republic in 1338/1922 and can be found in the İstanbul Atatürk Kitaplığı, MS
Osman Ergin 1514.
49 OF-MT, fol. 4a–b.
50 For more, see Shahzad Bashir, Fazlallah Astarabadi and the Hurufis (Oxford: Oneworld,
2005).
51 OF-MT, fols 4b–6b.

52 OF-MT, fols 21a–2a.
53 OF-RMN, fol. 174a–b. Note that there is a lacuna in the final sections of the manuscript,
especially that which discusses the fifth stage of the Halveti path. Other manuscript
copies of this unpublished work also seem to have this lacuna, suggesting an unfinished
work. Nevertheless, enough of the work survives to reconstruct its general framework
and format.
54 OF-RMN, fol. 174b.
55 For example, the first line runs as follows: Evvelâ nefs-i emmâre sifâtı heftdir * kibir ve
hırs ve hased ve şehvetdir * Dördü bu üçüncü dâhi diñle * buhl ve hıkd ve gazab ve hid-
detdir, meaning roughly: “First of all the characteristics of the imperious carnal soul are
seven: * they are self-importance, greed, envy and lust. * Listen to the four and also this
group of three: * avarice, malice, and violent rage.”
56 This analogy has a long history in Islamic history; see, for example, its appearance in
al-Masʿûdî (d. 344/956), The Meadows of Gold: The Abbasids, trans. Paul Lunde and
Caroline Stone (London: Kegan Paul, 1989), pp. 339–40.
57 OF-RMN, fol. 175a–b.
58 Here, we switch to the term “Kâdızâdeli” rather than “proto-Kâdızâdeli,” since this
work was completed around the year 1034/1625. By this time, the influence of Kâdızâde
Mehmed and his followers had begun to impact upon the politics of the empire; see
BKTZ, pp. 191–2. The Halveti–Kâdızâdeli debates would reach a crescendo at the end
of the 1620s, continuing until Mehmed’s death; see MCZ-KZ, p. 256.
59 OF-RMN, fol. 178b. Fuʾâdî’s opponents might have argued that these statements origi-
nated in contexts somewhat different from the interpretation that Fuʾâdî advances.
61 This work of Najm al-Dîn Abî Bakr b. ʿAbdullah b. Muhammad b. Shâhâdar al-Asad
al-Râzî (d. 654/1256–7) had a long and distinguished presence in Turkish intellectual
history, according to Kâtıp Çelebi. The first known text dated from the year 620/1223 in
Sivas during the height of the Seljuk period, and it was later translated into Turkish from
Persian during the reign of Murad II by Kâsim b. Mahmûd al-Karâhisârî; see KC-KZ,
vol. 2, pp. 1655–6. Najm al-Dîn al-Râzî was among the notable Sufi intellectuals who
fled the Mongol invasions to settle in Anatolia in the seventh/thirteenth century, and
he had a major influence on the development of Islamic mysticism there; see Wolper,
Cities and Saints, pp. 18 and 21. The work to which Fuʾâdî refers has been published
as Najm al-Dîn Râzî, Mersâd al-ʿebâd men al-mabdâʾ elâʾl-maʿâd: The Path of God’s
Bondsmen from Origin to Return, trans. Hamid Algar (Delmar, NY: Caravan Books,
1982). Fuʾâdî made no secret of the importance of Najm al-Dîn’s works to the Şaʿbâniye
branch of the Halveti, and included several manuscripts of these works within the vakıf
deed that established the complex so that Râzî’s works would be available in the library;
see OF-RV, fol. 54a.
62 OF-RMN, fol. 176a.
63 Some examples of the works to which Fuʾâdî is referring might be that of his illustri-
ous predecessor, Cemâl el-Halvetî, Risâlah fîʾl-atwâr waʾl-marâtib, Süleymaniye Lib.,
İstanbul, MS Hkm. 438/3), as Fuʾâdî was acquainted with a number of his other works.
Another example of an earlier, tenth/sixteenth-century atvar-ı saʿba work is that of
Sofyalı Bâlî Efendi (d. 960/1553), Atvâr-ı sabʿa, Atatürk Kitaplığı, İstanbul, MS Osman
Ergin 1213. Earlier works addressing the concept might have been known to him.

65 OF-RMN, fols 177a–8a.
67 This is probably the Mashâriq al-anwâr al-qudsiyya fî bayân al-ʿuhûd al-Muhammadiyya
of Shaykh ʿAbduʾl-Wahhâb b. Ahmad al-Shaʿrânî, written about 958/1550. The title
could also refer to another, earlier work by one Radiyuʾd-Dîn Hasan b. Muhammad
(d. 650/1252–3), entitled Mashâriq al-anwâr al-nabawiyya min suhahuʾl-akhbâr al-
Mustafawiyya. However, since the title of the latter work suggests jurisprudence rather
than narratives about the Prophet, the former is far more likely; see KC-KZ, vol. 2, pp.
1687–90.
69 OF-RMN, fols 180b, 181a, and 184b.
72 OF-RMN, fol. 189a–b.
74 ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî (d. 1045/1636), Risâle-i gülâbiye, Atatürk Kitaplığı, İstanbul, MS
Osman Ergin 614/17.
76 OF-RMN, fols 95b–6a. In fact, Fuʾâdî may be confusing the caliphate of ʿAbd al-Malik
(d. 86/705) with that of the more pious ʿUmar, who was acknowledged by later Muslims
to be an exceptionally religious figure among the otherwise problematic Umayyads; see
AK-IM, p. 12 and Hodgson, vol. 1, 248–9. However, it is also known that Hasan al-
Basrî served briefly as a judge under ʿUmar when the latter first ascended the throne in
98/717, and later perceptions about ʿUmar’s positions on various political and doctrinal
controversies during his reign would have given this story a ring of truth to later audi-
ences; see the analysis of Hasan’s life in W. Montgomery Watt, The Formative Period
of Early Islamic Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1980), pp. 77–81 and
99–104. See also Watt’s study of the free will controversy in early Islam in Free Will
and Predestination in Early Islam (London: Luzac, 1948), esp. pp. 54–5 and 165. The
acceptance of Hasan al-Basrî’s doctrines by the caliph ʿUmar is also appears in Josef
van Ess, “ʿUmar II and His Epistle against the Qadarîya,” Abr-Nahrain 12 (1971–2),
24–5.
77 Compare the later Şaʿbâniye work on the various stages compiled by Ünsî Hasan Efendi
(d. 1136/1723), Mecmûʿât al-rasâʾil, Atatürk Kitaplığı, İstanbul, MS Osman Ergin
1508, fols 8a–13b, where the attribute of “anxiety” is not mentioned.
78 OF-RMN, fol. 194a–b; one could read the nature of the “anxiety” described here
as related to the attribute of “action,” in that the seeker must always be struggling
ceaselessly toward the goals of the path. Still, the choice of words has a less positive
implication.
79 OF-RMN, fol. 194a, in margin; according to the late twelfth/eighteenth-century copyist,
it was taken from the “vird-i şerîf commentary of ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî,” which refers to
Şerh-i Vird-i settâr discussed subsequently.
80 ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî (d. 1045/1636), Risâle-i sadefiye. Atatürk Kitaplığı, İstanbul, MS
Osman Ergin 614/16, fols 188b–9a; the odd title of the work refers to a quote from the
work al-Manârât (“The Lighthouses”) by Najm al-Dîn al-Râzî (d. 654/1256–7) with
which Fuʾâdî opens the work; see also OF-RMN, fol. 177a. Fuʾâdî indicates that he
sees the language in which the dream took place as significant, and did not translate

it for his audience. This indicated that it was not to be made readily available to those
who did not know the language, a limitation on access perhaps demonstrating both the
personal importance of this event in shaping Fuʾâdî’s mystical outlook and its sacred
character.
81 The text survived in at least three copies, the earliest being included in OF-RV, with the
commentary on the Vird-i settâr running from fols 48b–94a; on fol. 48b it is recorded
that the author commenced the work on 10 Ziʾlhicce 1038/31 July 1629. However, in
another place, Fuʾâdî says that he was writing on a topic in 1040/1630–1, indicating that
the text took some time to complete (p. 69b). Fuʾâdî subsequently reorganized this text,
along with additional materials, to form the longer tract of the Makâle. See also Fuʾâdî,
Şerh-i Vird-i settâr, Atatürk Kitaplığı, İstanbul, MS Osman Ergin 484/2, fols 79a–141a,
which is a superior copy but dates from a later time and lacks the supporting apparatus
of the other parts of the Makâle-i ferdiye found in the Süleymâniye text (in fact, it inserts
the first fasıl of the Makâle after the commentary on the Vird). The same text, inserted
in another compilation of Fuʾâdî’s works, can also be found in Süleymaniye Library MS
Hacı Mahmud Efendi 2287, fols 173b–238b, but it omits certain sections found in MS
Esʿad Efendi 1734/3.
82 For more on Akşemseddîn and his career, see LCH, pp. 834–8 and HSN, pp. 240–6. The
author of the latter mentions having seen the work to which Fuʾâdî refers, although he
calls it the Risâle-i nûr (p. 246).
83 OF-RV, fols 23b–7b.
84 The ahl al-suffa, or “People of the Bench,” were a group of Muslims living near the
Kaʿba in Mecca, and devoted their entire existence to prayer and devotion except when
the Prophet called upon them to join one of his campaigns. Sufi biographers of medi-
eval times like Sulamî, Hujwirî, and Abû Nuʿaym incorporated biography about the
members of this group and established them as models for later Sufi adherents. Even Ibn
Taymiyya cited them as laudable exemplars; see W. Montgomery Watt, “Ahl al-Suffah,”
EI2, vol. 1, pp. 266–267.
85 The full narrative appears in OF-RV, fols 33b–4b; the story is a variation on narratives
of a similar nature that appear in the Arabic tradition. See, for example, the variations on
this story that appear in a work by an Egyptian scholar: Muhammad b. ʿAbd al-Rahman
as-Sakhâwî (d. 901/1496), Ruhbân al-kaffa fî bayân nubdhatin min akhbâr Ahl al-Suffa
(Riyadh: Dâr al-Salaf, 1995), pp. 125–30.
86 Dâvud Mahmûd al-Kayseri was a follower and student of Kâşânî, and his work
Muttaliʿ khusûs al-kalim min maʿânî Fusûs al-hikam (known in Ottoman circles as the
Muqaddimat sharh al-Fusûs) was a guide to understanding some of the basic precepts
that underlay Ibn al-ʿArabî’s cosmology; see KC-KZ, vol. 2, p. 1720. Dâvud was also an
important figure in Ottoman history, as he was considered to be the scholar the Ottomans
appointed to the first medrese that they built in İznik during the reign of Sultan Orhan;
see Taşköprüzâde (d. 968/1561), Al-Shaqâʾiq al-nuʿmâniyya fî ʿulamâʾ al-dawlat al-
ʿuthmâniyya wa yalîhi al-ʿaqd al-manzûm fî dhikri afâdil al-Rûm (Beirut: Dâr al-Kitâb
al-ʿArabî, 1975), p. 8.
87 OF-RV, fol. 42a–b.
88 OF-RV, fol. 43b.
89 OF-RV, fols 43b–4a.
90 In Arabic, subhânaka mâ ʿabadnâka haqqa ʿibâdatika yâ maʿbûdu, subhânaka mâ
ʿarafnâka haqqa maʿrifatika yâ maʿrûfu; an excellent copy of the original Arabic text

of the Vird-i settâr, fully voweled, can be found in Ahmed Nezih Galitekin, Gölcük
Örcün Köyü ve Baba Sultân Zâviyesi (Gölcük: Gölcük Belediyesi Kültür Yayınları No.
1, 2000), pp. 186–93, followed by its Turkish translation on pp. 194–7.
91 OF-RV, fol. 50a.
93 OF-Rv, fols 52a–3a.
94 OF-RV, fols 53b–4a; Fuʾâdî stressed that the work he cites, the Manâzil al-Sâʾirîn, is
available in the Şaʿbâniye library and should be consulted if the audience wants further
information.
96 OF-RV, fols 55a–6b.
98 The expression Fuʾâdî uses here, şerʿ-i şerîfde hürmeti nass-ı kâtıʿla sâbıt olan, implied
that people who are suspicious and always looking for heresy will end up twisting sacred
law to do the exact opposite of what it really says.
99 OF-RV, fol. 86b.
100 Gelibolulu Mustafa ʿAlî is an example of a political figure who actively criticized the
“eastern” figures who worked their way into the government, especially during the reign
of Murad III; see CF-MA, pp. 154–9.
101 OF-RV, fols 95b–8a.
102 OF-RV, fols 98b–9a; the passage is difficult to translate due to grammatical irregularities.
103 OF-Rv, fol. 99a–b.
104 On the importance of Junayd al-Baghdâdî to the history of Islamic mysticism and his
doctrine of “sobriety,” see the remarks of AK-IM, pp. 52–6. Fuʾâdî refers to this anec-
dote on several occasions in OF-RV; see fols 34b–5b in addition to p. 100b.
105 Al-Qurʾân, 33:41.
107 OF-RV, fols 103a–4b.

Chapter
The Political and Doctrinal Legacy

of ʿÖmer el- Fuʾâdî
The final years of ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî’s life were marked by religious and political
tensions in the Ottoman Empire present since the time of its foundation, and his
contemporaries came to note him as a central figure in the debates that caused
those tensions. Therefore, to a great extent, any assessment of his life and legacy
must be grounded in the context of his polemical response to the religio-political
crisis revolving around Muslim mysticism. The crisis was best symbolized by
the intractable debate over the legitimacy of the Halveti semâʿ, chanted litanies
set to musical accompaniment, and devrân, the circular motions that went with it
that sought to bring the seekers into a mystical state. The debate over these prac-
tices had ancient roots, but had usually not taken on the form of a lengthy and
sustained campaign against them. But by Fuʾâdî’s time, the level of aggression
and hostility over the issue had risen significantly.
To a modern observer the debate appears quaint or eccentric. Some might
liken it to the Byzantine debate over Iconoclasm, sometimes interpreted as an
obscure doctrinal dispute that had little relevance to the Byzantine Empire’s
very real problems in staving off Arab and Bulgarian invasion.1 Nevertheless,
a closer examination of the underlying issues suggests that there was more to
the semâʿ/devrân conflict than hair-splitting clashes between theologians and
mystics. Instead, the very foundations of Ottoman religious law was at stake.
This likewise extended into some very secular concerns, like the distribution of
positions in the religious hierarchy in a time of scarcity, as Madeline Zilfi has
aptly demonstrated.
Fuʾâdî’s contribution to this dispute was not the most significant among his
contemporaries; prominent scholars and Sufi leaders based in the capital were
more likely targets for the Ottoman chroniclers of the period. However, when
268

Political and Doctrinal Legacy of ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî 269
Fuʾâdî’s writings are intersected with other sources from this era, we gain insight
into how his work on behalf of the Şaʿbâniye posed an open challenge to the
emerging Kâdızâdeli movement in the final decades of his life. Furthermore,
Fuʾâdî’s success in rallying the order behind their achievements subsequently
extended its reach into the Ottoman capital by the end of the century. Yet
strangely, Fuʾâdî himself receded into the background as merely one individual
in a long chain of Şaʿbân’s successors after his death. His successors never fully
acknowledged the monumental contributions he made to the Şaʿbâniye.
.
ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî’s Role in Countering Criticisms of Halveti
Semâʿ and Devrân
The issues raised about vocal forms of prayer in the final chapter of Makâle-i
ferdiye may have taken on added urgency in the last decade of Fuʾâdî’s
life. At the beginning of the 1040s/1630s, when Fuʾâdî was completing his
lengthy defense of the order’s practices, debates between the followers of
Kâdızâde Mehmed and ʿAbdülmecîd Sivâsî Efendi (d. 1049/1639) over Sufi
practices had spilled over into the public sphere. The dispute played out
before gatherings of elites and commoners alike.2 Fuʾâdî was aware of these
developments, and produced several short tracts aimed specifically at defend-
ing the Halveti semâʿ and devrân. These practices were a central element
in the public presence of the Şaʿbâniye in Kastamonu, as well as other sub-
branches of the Halveti order. The ceremony was important for the recruit-
ment of the order’s members and the maintenance of their support; after all,
Şaʿbân himself had been brought into the order through participation in these
events.
Unfortunately, most of Fuʾâdî’s shorter treatises defending the semâʿ and
devrân cannot be accurately dated, which limits the historian’s ability to con-
textualize them. He may have written these tracts earlier in his career, or in
conjunction with the other tracts on Halveti ritual and practice treated in the
previous chapter. Nevertheless, one suspects that the growing power of Kâdızâde
Mehmed and his followers by the final decade of Fuʾâdî’s life indicates a com-
paratively late date for this material.
Fuʾâdî’s response was three separate treatises that expound the same general
arguments, but vary the level of detail. The length of the shortest, entitled A
Tract Pertaining to the Permissibility of the Sufi Devrân, could indicate it was
the first of the three to be written. However, the opposite could be true: this may
be an abridgment created from the lengthier versions. Fuʾâdî informs us only
that he wrote it hurriedly as an abridgment of more extensive arguments found
elsewhere, and that it should be promulgated only by competent individuals who

could expound on the basic points discussed in the text.3 In it, Fuʾâdî described
three particular groups at the root of the contemporary conflict:
The first of these [groups] are those who lack capability in the detailed expla-
nation of opinions and correct ascertainment of conditions, since they cannot
follow a career in the knowledge of Sufism and are incapable of disciplining their
carnal souls, purifying their hearts, or polishing their souls. [This is] because they
are extremist scholars in exoteric knowledge and the reason of their existence is
exoteric knowledge. Another [group] are those who are scholars, but have no
perfection or virtue with the annihilated state in knowledge, and only see and
read the opinions and legal decisions of other scholars, and [then] interfere and
criticize [using] those [sources]. Another [group] has no knowledge themselves;
they hear from the mouths of scholars and they don’t know their state and limit
and faults out of ignorance, and they pass themselves off as pious and do not
examine their error [born of] ignorance, and they interfere and criticize.4
This discussion reveals that the challenge facing the Halveti order now applied
to all levels of society, and was no longer just an academic debate among
Muslim elites. While earlier generations of Halveti leaders debated these issues
in Arabic, limiting access to the well educated, Fuʾâdî’s generation sought a
population with increased religious literacy. Both Fuʾâdî and his contemporar-
ies recognized the urgency of providing instruction to a wider Ottoman public
in their own language in order to defend Sufi practice. The complaint notes that
Kâdızâdeli scholars were no longer content to challenge Halvetis at the level of
high-ranking jurisprudence: they recruited rank and file Ottoman subjects “with
no knowledge themselves” who had taken an interest in religious issues and sup-
ported an ill-advised activist movement. The only way to counter this challenge
was to fight fire with fire by arming a counter-force with defenses for the prac-
tices of Halveti Sufism. This point is what Fuʾâdî’s career so richly illustrates for
the Ottoman historian.
Fuʾâdî’s critique implies a growing class of scholars with basic levels of
competence in reading jurisprudence from various texts, but lacking the intel-
lectual background or access to a adequate source base to interpret this material
appropriately. Thus, they misused materials drawn from the Islamic intellectual
inheritance by reading them out of context in order to censure the Halveti order.
This problem troubled Fuʾâdî so much that he devoted two additional tracts of
greater length to articulate a defense grounded fully in the traditions of the past.
His project was in part aimed at popularizing earlier works of notable Halveti
figures like Cemâl el-Halvetî5 and Sünbül Sinân Efendi,6 who had laid down a
framework justifying the permissibility and laudability of Halveti practices.

Fuʾâdî’s works also revived a renowned fetvâ that subsequently evolved
into an apologetic treatise written by a long-serving şeyhülislâm, Zenbillî ʿAlî
Efendi (d. 931/1525), who had served under Ottoman sultans from Bayezid II to
Süleymân. This foundation illustrated both the long life of the controversy and
the role of prominent Ottoman scholars in upholding Sufi legitimacy in earlier
eras.7 Fuʾâdî’s work commented on the Arabic text of the fetvâ, making it acces-
sible to a broader audience. Some of his commentary added to the debate by
introducing a counter-tradition about Yahyâ b. Muʿadh, who defended his prac-
tice of vocal zikr against those who challenged its legitimacy, and subsequently
won them over as followers.8
However, contemporary studies have overlooked the fact that a specific
part of this project created a firestorm of controversy. Fuʾâdî’s criticism of the
order’s detractors took aim at specific sources that they cited in demanding the
prohibition of Halveti practices. The most prominent of these was an entry in a
compilation of judicial opinions that played a significant role in the formation
of Ottoman Hanafî jurisprudence: the Fatâwâ al-Bazzâziyya. It was compiled
by the renowned Hanafî scholar, Hafız al-Dîn Muhammad b. Shihâb al-Kurdarî
al-Bazzâzî (d. 827/1424).9
It is difficult to develop a clear picture of Bazzâzî’s activities during his
lifetime – like our early Halveti shaykhs, he emerged from an era of Islamic
history that suffers from both limited documentation and scholarly neglect.
Nevertheless, it is worth summarizing what we do know about how he became
part of early Ottoman intellectual life. Born in Kurdar, a town in the area of
Ürgenç near the Syr Darya river in the eighth/fourteenth century, he was edu-
cated by his father Muhammad b. Shihâb, a local Hanafî scholar who compiled
the fiqh of Jalâl al-Dîn b. Shams al-Khwarizmî al-Karalânî. The latter was, in
turn, another noted jurist whose scholarly auspices can be traced back to the
renowned Hanefî jurist Kâdîkhân.10 However, Bazzâzî was born in an inauspi-
cious age, for when Timur first began his bloody conquests, Khwarizm and its
capital Ürgenç were one of the first targets. After enduring multiple raids over
the course of a decade, Ürgenç fell and was destroyed in 780/1379. It can be
assumed that the young Bazzâzî was forced to flee the carnage.11 These traumatic
experiences gave him a lifelong hatred of Timur, and at one point, he issued a
fetva declaring Timur an infidel based on his continued adherence to the yasa of
Chinggis Khan.12 Moreover, as Timur had patronized prominent Sufi shaykhs in
Transoxiana and elsewhere, this may have been an additional source of friction
for hostile fuqahâʾ like Bazzâzî.13
Bazzâzî found temporary refuge in the Golden Horde’s capital of Saray,
which fell under the control of Timur’s eventual rival, Toktamış (d. c. 808/1405),
where he interacted with other Muslim scholars. However, Toktamış’s eventual

defeat and further Timurid advances led Bazzâzî to seek refuge even farther to
the west in the Crimea, where he remained for two years teaching others before
finally returning to Khwarizm, perhaps around 805/1403.14 Unfortunately, the
skeletal narrative provided by fuqahâ’ biographies do not give a clear sense of
Bazzâzî’s movements or chronology thereafter. We know only that he was dis-
satisfied enough to leave his homeland again at the end of his life to settle in the
nascent Ottoman Empire. He arrived with the compilation of legal opinions for
which he would become known already in hand, having completed it the same
year as his return to Khwarizm.15 He had also written a biography describing
the life and jurisprudence of Abû Hanifa, founder of the Hanefî school of law.16
Since his work spread into regions as diverse as India and Egypt, in addition to
Anatolia and Central Asia, his impact on the history of Hanafî jurisprudence in
the Middle Ages was significant.17
According to Tâşköprüzâde, when Bazzâzî established himself among the
Ottomans, he met the prominent scholar Molla Şemseddîn Mehmed al-Fenârî
(d. 834/1431). Since Molla Fenârî was not resident in Bursa until 824/1421, one
assumes that Bazzâzî did not meet him until the final years of his life.18 Their
interaction may have been brief in any case – the only record we have of their
encounter is that Bazzâzî demonstrated his superiority in the practical applica-
tion of Islamic law (furûʿ), while Fenârî proved superior in his knowledge of its
sources (usûl) and the other branches of knowledge.19 This squares fairly well
with what we know about Bazzâzî’s works, which focus specifically on practical
definitions and guidelines for proper behavior in various aspects of social and
religious life. Ultimately, Bazzâzî may not have lived long enough to take up a
prominent position in the Ottoman learned hierarchy, but his writings lived on as
a reference for future generations. Moreover, the biographer al-Laknawî records
at least four noted Hanafî scholars who were trained by him either directly or his
students, some of whom had also migrated to the Ottoman realm.20
The sticking point between the Kâdızâdeli movement and Halveti leaders
like Fu’âdî was a series of decisions that appear in a chapter of Bazzâzî’s juris-
prudence about whether certain utterances constitute manifestations of Islamic
belief, unbelief, or simply erroneous thinking. In a sub-section entitled “on
what is said about the Qurʾan and recitations (adhkâr) and prayer,” Bazzâzî
laid down two precedents that became central to subsequent debates. The first
states that “[whoever] recites the Qurʾan with the striking of a tambourine and
a rod commits unbelief because of taking it lightly (istikhfâf); the etiquette of
the Qurʾan is not to recite [it] in these types of gatherings.” The second was,
“the gathering which assembles for singing and dancing should not recite the
Qurʾan, just as it should not be recited in selling (bayʿ) [things] or churches
(kinâʾis) because [these] are points of conjunction with the devil . . .”21 Since

both opinions could be interpreted as condemning Halveti practices despite their
origins two centuries previously, they presented an opportunity for Kâdızâdelis
to seek suppression of the Sufi orders.22
Bazzâzî did not stand alone. Another early fetva compilation existed from
the first half of the ninth/fifteenth century from Kırk Emre el-Hamîdî, a jurist
attached to the court of the Ottoman sultan, Murad II. Beyond this, we know
even less about him than Bazzâzî, but it is clear that he took a similar position
with regard to zikr ceremonies among the Sufis. Kırk Emre criticized their gath-
erings in a “chapter on reprehensible things” (kitâb al-karâha); in it he censured
the raising of voices and the “sounds of saʿq and zaʿq,” by which he intended
an approximation of the noises that participants made. He also reiterated the
criticism of the use of tambourines in the context of religious recitations.23 Later
Ottoman jurists supplemented these two legal precedents by noting that another
Hanafî scholar, al-Pazdawî (d. 482/1089), had said in a work on the sources of
law (usûl al-fiqh) that the Sufi devrân was “a repugnant act, and its forbidden
[character] is confirmed by a clear proof-text.”24
Thus, elements of the debate were not new, but the question of how jurists
of the past had handled the issue of music and ritual motions, both with regard
to the activities of the Sufis and in general, had never definitively been settled.
Fuʾâdî knew that various jurists in differing contexts had offered wildly diver-
gent opinions on these issues,25 so he had recourse to a pre-existing tradition
of his own to defend the semâʿ and devrân from his opponents. Therefore, the
primary texts on which he would base his own defense and commentary deserve
our attention: (1) the aforementioned Zenbillî ʿAlî fetva, which defended the
Sufi zikr and devrân against accusations leveled in the fetvâ collections; and (2)
the Risâlat al-tahqîqiyya, written by the founder of the Sünbüliye branch of the
Halveti order, Sünbül Efendi.26
Both texts emerged from a turbulent political period during the reigns of
Sultan Selim I and his son Süleyman, when Sufi movements came under general
suspicion in the wake of the Safavid irruption across the Ottomans’ eastern fron-
tiers. Interestingly, Fuʾâdî’s historical contextualization of Sünbül Efendi’s writ-
ings seems particularly problematic when compared with earlier sources about
the Sünbüliye sub-branch. Fu’âdî contended that Sünbül’s Risâlat al-tahqîqiyya
was written after he had defeated an anti-Sufi nemesis, Molla ʿArab Mehmed
b. ʿÖmer (d. 938/1531), in open debate before Selim himself, who judged the
Sünbüliye leader to be in the right.27 This is not out of the question, for Molla
ʿArab had distinguished himself both by participating in Selim’s campaigns
against the Safavids and criticizing Sufi rituals.28 However, the Risâlat al-
tahqîqiyya also remained unfinished at the time of Sünbül’s death in 936/1529.
This means that he either began the project at a much later date, or that he

intended to improve on his aforementioned oral defense, but he (or his followers)
never finished codifying its written equivalent.
Complicating matters, in other sources we find that the anti-devrân leader
against whom Sünbül successfully defended the order was Sarı Gürz Nûreddîn
(d. 926/1520), another high-ranking jurisprudent linked to anti-dervish and anti-
Safavid activities during Selim’s reign.29 Fuʾâdî may have conflated the two
figures of Sarı Gürz with Molla ʿArab; hardly impossible given that the two
figures had strong potential to be allied to anti-Sufi contemporaries. The half
finished manuscript of Sünbül’s work, which few scholars seem to have noted,30
combined with Sarı Gürz’s death shortly after Selim’s, suggests that Fuʾâdî
understood the two texts of Zenbillî ʿAlî’s fetva and Sünbül Efendi’s Risâlat
al-tahqîqiyya as part of a linked historiography tied to Sultan Selim’s hostility
toward the Halveti order after his seizure of power.31
Molla ʿArab had an interesting career spanning over four decades, serving
under Akkoyunlu, Mamluk, and Ottoman rulers. His scholarly pedigree traced
back to the noted Hanafî scholar, Taftâzânî, who was his grandfather’s teacher
when the two lived in Transoxiana. Later, his grandfather migrated to Antakya
(Antioch), where Molla ʿArab was born. After activity in multiple regions of the
weakening Akkoyunlu sultanate, including Diyarbekir, Hasankeyf, Tabrîz, and
Aleppo, he went on the pilgrimage. Rather than return to his homeland, however,
he chose to go to Egypt and enter the service of the Mamluk Sultan Qâytbây as
both a jurist and preacher until the latter’s death in 901/1496. For undisclosed
reasons, he then departed to Ottoman domains and settled in Bursa. Oddly, he
not only wrote a biography of the Prophet Muhammad, but a tract on Sufism
during the reign of Bayezid II. But in an echo of the earlier Arab–Byzantine
frontier, he truly distinguished himself as a warrior-scholar attached to Ottoman
military campaigns. During the storming of one fortress, he was reportedly
the second or third soldier to break through the defenses. He later settled in
the Ottoman capital, where he took up “enjoining the right and forbidding the
wrong.”32 It was here where he most likely clashed with the noted Sufi leader,
Cemâl el-Halvetî, in theory close to the end of the latter’s life in 905/1499.33
Fuʾâdî may not have been wrong in declaring Molla ʿArab as the primary villain
against whom defenses of semâʿ and devrân were originally aimed. After all, he
outlived even Sünbül Efendi.
One should take a moment here to reflect on what this picture means for
recent historiography attempting to categorize “Ottoman schools of thought.”
One recent study argues that Ottoman scholarly hierarchies were characterized
by (1) the great şeyhülislâms and other prominent religious scholars who were
grounded in a Maturidî and Hanafî tradition originating in Central Asia and Iran
(loosely dubbed the “Fahr-i Râzî school”), and (2) other, less prominent scholars

whose thought was more influenced by scholarly traditions emanating from
the Arabic-speaking heartlands of the Islamic world, and espoused viewpoints
rooted in the early eighth/fourteenth-century teachings of Ibn Taymiyya. Given
what we have seen in this context, such broad characterizations may require
some fine-tuning.34 Of course, we have noted already that the aforementioned
şeyhülislâm Saʿdeddîn had dismissed Ibn Taymiyya’s ideas while showing
awareness of them, and Molla ʿArab’s career path certainly traveled through
Arab lands. However, most of the scholarly debates on legal logistics seen here
revolve around figures who are better grounded in the first category. The collec-
tions of legal decisions cited were drawn from authors who both chronologically
preceded and followed Ibn Taymiyya. Thus, attempting to draw straightforward
lines of transmission from Ibn Taymiyya’s thought directly to the doctrines of
Kâdızâdeli upstarts are premature, whatever the similarities between the agenda
of Ibn Taymiyya and the Kâdızâdelis.35
Fuʾâdî’s presentation of these issues took the form of taking Zenbillî ʿAlî’s
fetva and liberally supplementing it with arguments proffered by Sünbül Efendi
in his Risalat al-tahqîqiyya. Since both texts were written in Arabic, Fuʾâdî
sought to broaden their accessibility by translating them. However, he was not
content with translation alone: he also sought to amplify the original accusations
that Zenbillî ʿAlî had leveled at the three earlier critics of the semâʿ and devrân
ceremonies. Zenbillî ʿAlî’s basic critique was that “the author of the Bazzâziyya
is not among the mujtahidîn [founding expounders of Islamic law], and the same
goes for the author of the Pazdawiyya . . . and as for the author of the Jâmiʿ al-
Fatâwâ, [Kırk Emre], he came in the time of Sultan Murad II to the city of Edirne
and wrote his book there.”36 The şeyhülislâm was content to let the matter rest
there. Moreover, Sünbül Efendi did not openly criticize Bazzâzî either. In his
own defense, he even drew on Bazzâzî’s other fetvâs to support his arguments
on various matters, implying that he did not challenge the jurist’s authority.37
Fuʾâdî, on the other hand, took a different approach. Drawing on one of the well-
known juridical works of the subsequent Ottoman şeyhülislâm, Kemâlpaşazâde
(d. 940/1534), he advanced the following argument:
Know that the jurisprudents are [arranged] according to seven levels. The first
[is] the level of the mujtahidîn on the noble law, such as the four masters,38 and
on the authority of the path of their endeavor on the establishment of the founda-
tions of the basic principles and the deduction of the cases of application from
the four proofs of the Book, the traditions, the consensus of the Community, and
analogy based upon those foundations, without any imitation [of others], and
having no limitations either in the practical application [of the law] or the sources
[of law]. The second is the level of the mujtahidîn within the school of law, such

as Abû Yûsuf and Muhammad . . . and the other companions of Abû Hanifa . . .
among those capable of the extraction of judgments according to the aforemen-
tioned principles in the manner of a follower of the principles whose supports
Abû Hanifa imposed. Although they differ in some of the practical applications
of the law, they are relying on the basic principles of the law, or distinguished
ones from the opponents of the school of law . . . such as al-Shâfiʿî . . . and his
counterparts opposed to Abû Hanifa. There is doubt in cases where imitators
follow [their decisions] in the sources [of law]. The third is the level of the muj-
tahidîn in regard to the problems where no precedent is cited from the leader of
the school of law, such as al-Mudâf and Abû Jaʿfar al-Tahâwî and Abûʾl-Hasan
al-Karkhî and others. They do not go contrary to the shaykh in either the sources
[of law] or the practical application, but they derive the cases on problems for
which there is no provision . . . The fourth is the level of the masters of derivation
(takhrîj) among the imitators (muqallidîn) such as al-Bazzâzî and his followers.39
Rounding out the final three categories are two lesser classes of “imitators”
(muqallidîn) and the remainder, who lack proper skills to be of any value to the
field of jurisprudence at all. Skillfully welding together Zenbillî ʿAlî and Sünbül
Efendi’s arguments, Fuʾâdî demonstrated how the highest ranking jurists of
Kemâlpaşazâde’s hierarchy never criticized the Sufi semâʿ and devrân ceremo-
nies. In fact, first tier figures like al-Shâfiʿî and Malik b. Anas even endorsed
them. Therefore, anyone who declared that these Sufi ceremonies were unlawful,
or condemned those who allowed them, was, by definition, censuring the found-
ers of Islamic schools of law: an unacceptable position for all participants in the
debate.40
By ratcheting up the more polite rhetoric of his predecessors, Fu’âdî had
raised the stakes for his opponents. He sought to relegate Bazzâzî, upon whom
the opinions of his opponents relied, to the level of a fourth-class intellectual; he
could be trusted only insofar as he derived his work from more accepted jurists
of other eras. These arguments clearly infuriated Fu’âdî’s Kâdızâdeli opponents,
perhaps not least because Kemâlpaşazâde had also issued a fetvâ against some
Sufis who had performed the devrân in mosques during his own time!41 Their
rage can be discerned in a series of later fetvâs, appended as an introduction to
the oldest extant copy of the Fatâwâ al-Bazzâziyya. There, an otherwise anony-
mous “Kâdı Ahmed” issued a series of legal decisions on his own authority
denouncing the claims of those who advanced Fuʾâdî’s ideas:
What is commanded in response to this problem? If a prayer-leader (imâm) were

to enter the zikr circle of the Sufis and do however much semâʿ and dancing
(raks), and fall over while turning around repeatedly, and if a scholar (ʿâlim)

were to say to him, “this act that you are doing is forbidden in the legal decisions
of the Bazzâziyya and the Jâmiʿ al-Fatâwâ,” and if he were to respond, “I do not
act [in accordance] with those books,” then is the leadership of a prayer leader
like him suitable for the Muslims now? . . . The response (and God knows best):
He is an unbeliever. His wife is divorced [from him].42
Such ruthless attacks, aimed not on ly at the offending person but at his family
also, indicate the degree to which discounting the viewpoints of Bazzâzî and
like-minded scholars threatened Kâdızâdeli proponents during the eleventh/
seventeenth century.
Even more interestingly, subsequent fetvâs expressed the Kâdızâdelis’
increasing frustration with the responses to their opinions. In one, it is asked
whether it is legitimate for a judge to remove an offending prayer leader from his
position, but then restore him to it without forcing him to renew his profession
of faith and reaffirm his marriage. In Kadı Ahmed’s view, the answer was nega-
tive, but like so many fetvâs, the question itself is more relevant. It illustrates the
passive resistance Kâdızâdeli activists faced from more moderate scholars who
may have looked askance at the extreme punishments advocated by a factional
fringe. Kâdızâdeli frustration with this state of affairs builds in response to the
following situation: “If a judge were not to act [in accordance] with the legal
decision that conforms to the law and is agreeable to the decision of the giver
of the fetvâ, what does that judge deserve?” The response was that he should
be removed from his position and that his decisions should henceforth not be
obeyed.43 All of these punishments pale in comparison, however, to the outrage
that Fuʾâdî’s arguments generate:
If some people among the Sufis were to say [that] Bazzâzî and the Jâmiʿ al-
Fatâwâ and Havî and the Tühfet and Bağvî and Qurtabî and the Kaşşâf are not
accepted books,44 and they conflict with and oppose the scholars, then are these
aforementioned books accepted books or not, and also, what is legally necessary
for the person who speaks like this? . . . The response (and God knows best):
They are accepted [books]. It is necessary to apply a severe chastisement (taʿzîr-i
belîg)45 to those who take [them] lightly, and force them to renew [the profession
of] their faith.
Later, Kadı Ahmed goes as far as to opine that if the Sufis continue to insist
on defaming these works, they should be executed.46 Fuʾâdî and his supporters
had clearly hit a nerve that had exacerbated the conflict. This was because the
argument he advanced was not just about Sufi practices, but about reorienting
the juristic heritage of the Ottomans. This course of action proved repugnant to

his opponents; moreover, even more moderate thinkers might have been given
pause. Nevertheless, the shrillness of the denunciations indicated that Fuʾâdî’s
contributions to the intellectual defenses of the Halveti order were having an
impact by the end of his career.
The Mixed Reception of ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî’s Legacy: a Problem

of Sources?
Fuʾâdî’s responses to controversies over Sufi practice are not the only evidence
we have for his effectiveness among his contemporaries. Shortly before his
death, other contemporaries began to register a vague awareness of his prolific
output. Although the biographical dictionary produced by Nevʿîzâde ʿAtâʾî
makes only cursory references to Şaʿbân and Fuʾâdî, his brief description
obliquely references the stir Fuʾâdî had created:
[Şaʿbân] was a master of the power of guidance with the pearl of independent
thought (ijtihâd), and he built a lodge in his home region. When the lodge
became a place of gnosis, the Kaʿba of the lovers and the pilgrimage place
of distant horizons, he departed the world of bodily forms and set out for the
world of souls in the year 977 (1569). The aforementioned noble one was
the chief of the shaykhs of the region of Rûm, the virtue-filled one of the
wineshop of love and affection, the basis of skilled guidance, and the drink-
ing place of the sweetness of virtue. The wisdom of his path was the vocal
zikr and devrân, the manifestation of ecstasy (vecd), and invoked blessings of
the love of God; he was a noble one who quickly attracted people. He used
to accept neither gifts or positions, and made do with farming, cultivation,
and whatever he could get by the sweat of his own brow (kesb-i yedleri). At
present, his tomb is a pilgrimage place, and his successor, a knowledgeable
one named ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî, is watching over it: * Poetic couplet: The lovers
who are inflamed by the wine of divine love cry out from being struck by the
heart-inflaming arrow of love * No gathering or council is free from the rever-
berating clamor of * Poem: Fuʾâdî oh Fuʾâdî oh Fuʾâdî * Fuʾâdî wandering
in every valley. 47
The report adds little to our knowledge about Şaʿbân except that he engaged in
farming and agriculture, a point that Fuʾâdî never directly addressed. But ʿAtâʾî
does indicate the growing popularity of the contemporary Şaʿbâniye leader and
his following, implying through his choice of words that Fuʾâdî was fairly suc-
cessful in spreading Şaʿbân’s legacy. Furthermore, there is also an eleventh/
seventeenth-century copy of Sünbül Efendi’s Risâlat al-tahqîqiyya that extended

the silsile of the Halveti order in the original into the time of Fuʾâdî’s immediate
successor, Çorumlu İsmâʿîl Efendi.48
Nevertheless, it is curious that many non-Şaʿbâniye works that include
biographical information about Halveti notables in the Ottoman Empire ignore
the Şaʿbâniye sub-branch of the order altogether. Instead, they focus primarily
on either the Egyptian-based Gülşeniye or the İstanbul-based Sünbüliye and
Sivâsiye sub-branches of the Halveti order.49 Given Fuʾâdî’s prolific output, and
the growing respect accorded to Şaʿbân’s legacy and tomb complex at the time
these works were produced, the Şaʿbâniye’s absence from the historical record
is puzzling. Disinterest in provincials who were not from the religious establish-
ments of the three big cities of İstanbul, Edirne, and Bursa might be responsible
in part, but ʿAtâʾî did at least make a token mention of several shaykhs who
claimed Şaʿbâniye roots in his work, especially during the time of Murad III.
Moreover, other Sufi hagiographers like Hulvî litter their work with provincial
shaykhs from backwater villages like Cavdar, Şeyhlû, and Siroz, to name but
a few.50 Did Şaʿbân’s spiritual descent, which did not pass through one of the
more notable successors to Ottoman Halveti founders like Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî and
Cemâl el-Halvetî, lead other Halveti authors from other sub-branches to dismiss
the Şaʿbâniye as lacking in importance?
There is another possibility, which is that until the time of Fuʾâdî’s accession
as head of the Şaʿbâniye, their followers had developed a dubious reputation.
The troubled legacy of the influential Halveti dervish Şeyh Şücâʿ at Murad III’s
court, which Fu’âdî quietly neglected in his own work, may have contributed to
a skeptical perception of Şaʿbâniye legitimacy. The relationship between Murad
III and Şücâʿ was not viewed positively by many Ottomans; Gelibolulu Mustafa
ʿAlî even argued that this was one of the factors which led to the failure of
Murad’s reign and subsequent weakness of the Ottoman state.51 Even Sinâneddin
Yûsuf b. Yaʿkûb, author of an original copy of the Tezkiretüʾl-Halvetiye pre-
sented to Murad III himself, contented himself solely with noting Şaʿbân’s
existence by pointing out that “the Shaykh Şücâʿ that came with the sultan [from
Maʾnisa] is from the silsile of Şa‘ban Efendi” through the silsile passing through
Cemâl el-Halvetî and Hayreddîn Tokâdî. This seems out of place given the
level of influence that Şeyh Şüca‘ had attained by 984/1577 when the work was
submitted. Could this reflect the ambivalence of an established, İstanbul-based
Sünbüliye hagiographer about a provincial upstart whose political successes and
attachments to worldly power indicated a questionable character, or acted as a
source of potential competition for Sinâneddîn’s own ambitions?52
Of course, historical interpretation based largely on omissions in the litera-
ture are problematic. However, one final point worth noting is that ʿÖmer el-
Fuʾâdî had a son who became a poet of minor repute, though we know him only

by his pen name, Kalbî Efendi.53 Shortly before his father’s death, he composed
a starkly critical poem lambasting the people of İstanbul for their moral failures
in the wake of a great fire that destroyed much of the city in 1043/1633.54 The
poem is written in a simple, rhyming meter that would have been easy to memo-
rize even among the least literate members of society; its broad accessibility
reflects his father’s tactical savvy. Moreover, the strong Sufi influences Kalbî
had acquired from his father also emerge in the poem:
Come, let’s recall the Creator from the heart.

Let us be happy with the remembrance of God.
Kalbî is a man who is one with God.
Anxiety and happiness are at every moment one to him.
Devotion to [God] the Guider is required of us,
Submission and acceptance no matter what comes.
If you were to deserve the manifestation of divine wrath,
Repent of all your insubordinations,
And think of the goodness of divine perfection that is esteemed
And recall and give thanks for however many of these favors.
This time a lapse came over the people.
The majority found renown with insubordination.
The ignorant ones assumed the form of scholars.
Be they judges or ministers of state,
By finding plenty they became corrupt;
Their eyes filled with the smoke of tobacco.
O what shall the rest of the multitude of the people do
But follow the example of the scholars?
Elements of the Halveti path, reflected in the idea of resigning oneself to any-
thing that comes, are coupled with a warning to the public to repent of their sins.
More interesting, however, is the increasingly politicized tone of the poem, criti-
cizing scholars and grandees as having given in to their own baser instincts. Even
more interestingly, Kalbî’s negative view of tobacco demonstrates that it was not
just the Kâdızâdelis who disapproved of smoking, but many Sufis also.55 Kalbî
does not limit his criticism to scholars and grandees, however:
There is no obedience to the command of the sultan,

Nor is there assistance for God’s side.
They were the universal curse of corruption and immorality.
They filled the city with turpitude and abasement.
There is no victory for the enjoiners of right.

The majority are for the corrupt, and also so many censurers.
These ones took the face of darkness as sunlight,
As if adultery and drinking of wine were permitted . . .,
While the pious ones were preaching and admonishing
And persevering in the forbidding of wrong.
They recited so many [Qurʾânic] verses and traditions.
They entreated, saying, “don’t do it!”
Kalbî’s critique evokes Fuʾâdî’s and his predecessors’ arguments that contempo-
rary scholars who criticized their practices would have been censured themselves
by superior thinkers of earlier generations. Thus, the poem concludes that the
punishment for this activity was made clear to everyone by God himself by the
fire. Kalbî goes as far as to state that salvation was obtained only by recourse to
an unnamed Muslim saint:
Pious reverence came to the heart of no one,

Nor did [anyone] make recourse to God at any moment.
The fire reached out with the anger of God.
The inner part of İstanbul was a fearful hell.
All of it had been ordered to burn.
This calamity was distressing for them.
When one of the secret men interceded –
An unassailable prohibition when [the fire] had gotten this far.
God Most High granted [his wish] and favored [him].
The fire departed with this intercession.
Could any other person ever have done it? . . .
Who among you has a remedy for the violence of God
Since everyone’s face is blackened also?56
Since the job of fighting the twenty-three or so serious fires that broke out in
İstanbul between 1600 and 1800 often fell to officials like the grand vizier
and the ağa of the janissaries, the crack about the blackened faces of the elites
struggling to contain the blaze implies a populist resonance among the people
of İstanbul.57 Kalbî, following the lead of his father, sought to orient the popu-
lation’s devotions away from more stringent ideas about reforming religion
toward Sufi leaders instead. The fire, which in a pre-modern urban context could
have devastating indirect consequences, such as famine and extreme privation
through exposure to the elements, represented an opportunity for Kalbî to step
in and convince his contemporaries that it marked a moment for reassessment
and a new direction.58 By pointing out that the population had been saved from

a worse fate by the very people whom their leaders had been oppressing, Kalbî
also defended the cult of saints in the public arena. In his own way, he tried to
perpetuate the example of his father’s illustrious career.
Sometime in 1045/1636, ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî’s life finally came to an end. He
was buried on the northern side of the tomb that he had struggled for so many
years to construct, between his own guide Muhyiddîn and Şaʿbân himself.
Unlike Şaʿbân’s case, we do not have any historical record of the circumstances
surrounding his death and burial. All we know is that Çorumlu İsmâʿîl Efendi (d.
1057/1647), by virtue of his natural talents, was considered the best replacement.
While İsmâʿîl authored several tracts of his own, he did not have the impact that
his mentor did; few mentions of him appear in the sources, though they suggest
a sober-minded leader in the tradition of his predecessor.59 Moreover, given the
extensive nature of Fuʾâdî’s output, one might suggest that İsmâʿîl did not feel
an urgent need to be prolific when his following could rely on the foundation laid
by his predecessor.
On the other hand, İsmâʿîl was credited with training one of the most notable
Halveti leaders of the following generation, Karabâş ʿAlî Veli (d. 1097/1686),
whose profile in the Ottoman capital would overshadow even the Kastamonu-
based successors.60 Karabâş ʿAlî later settled in İstanbul and played an impor-
tant role in the politico-religious disputes marking the climax of the Kâdızâdeli
movement. While the titular head of the order was always based at the tomb in
Kastamonu, the illustrious successors he trained spread throughout the empire
and became a sub-branch of the Halveti in their own right. This demonstrates
that Fu’âdî’s broadening of the popular base of the order had borne rich fruit by
the end of the eleventh/seventeenth century, for thereafter the Şaʿbâniye leaders
went beyond their local origins to become increasingly influential at the heart
of the empire’s religio-political circles. This, however, must remain a story for
another time.61 After all, Şaʿbân’s silsile came to extend all the way into the early
years of the Turkish Republic. Only then did Atatürk’s socio-cultural reforms
critically weaken the influence of Ottoman Sufi orders and transform the param-
eters of Turkish religious life.62
***
Part II of this work focused on the narrative portrait that ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî painted
of the founder of his branch of the Halveti order, Şaʿbân-ı Veli. In it, we see that
Fuʾâdî generally sought to direct and interpret, rather than whitewash the oral
material on which he based his hagiography of the order’s founders. But after
making a survey of Fuʾâdî’s extensive literary output, it cannot be ignored that
the construction of his hagiography was irrevocably bound to the events of his

own life and times, and constituted a response to the troubled age in which he
lived. The historical context for Fuʾâdî’s works was linked to periods of demo-
graphic crisis and the endangerment of much of urban life in the Anatolian coun-
tryside.63 His own recollections on joining the Şaʿbâniye indicate an educated
man in a provincial town who, despite establishing a modest career attached to
institutions of Ottoman jurisprudence, felt frustrated about his long-term pros-
pects. His family’s strong connections to Şaʿbân ultimately led him to apply his
efforts there instead. Yet contrary to the over-simplified picture of jurisprudent–
Sufi tensions, he did not abandon his earlier field of work. Instead, he welded
together the exoteric and esoteric aspects of Islamic religious life in his writings.
Given the disruptions in Anatolian provincial life that marked his era, the iron
disciplinary rigor for both exoteric and esoteric observance that he enjoined may
have struck a chord among his contemporaries.
More importantly, Fuʾâdî recognized that in order to confront an era of
crisis and change, a broader segment of the population needed increased access
to religious scholarship and ideas, even if that meant risking the possibility of
“guidance without a shaykh.” While some would dismiss Fuʾâdî’s work as deriv-
ative and unoriginal compared with that of his contemporaries, I argue that he
demonstrated a knack for revising the scholarly apparatus inherited from earlier
periods of Islamic history to address new and pressing problems. He expanded
accessibility to key works that were limited previously to only the best edu-
cated scholars who had backgrounds in Arabic or Persian. Given the transition
between the medieval and early modern periods of world history, this step had
consequences not unlike the impact that vernacular translations of the Bible had
during a roughly contemporary period of crisis in European religious and intel-
lectual culture.64 We know that the successors of Şaʿbân-ı Veli built a library
containing a number of important works that formed the backbone for the com-
munity’s educational resources. These were placed in a new structure adjacent to
the tomb when its construction was completed.65 Fuʾâdî’s own writings, prolific
as they were, also worked to augment this collection and act as a gateway for the
novice seekers flooding the Şaʿbâniye’s ranks.66
Fuʾâdî’s activities also intertwined with his history of the order’s founding
and development. Since the hagiography proved to be, and may well have been
intended as a catalyst to the permanent construction the tomb complex and its
attendant institutions, its content argues away any attempt to present Şaʿbân
as other than a laudable, respected religious figure. To a great extent, Fuʾâdî’s
choice of material to represent Şaʿbân reflected that goal. We do not know the
broader narratives contained in the more extensive, and now lost, Arabic version
of his hagiographic work. But it is highly probable that the material presented
Şaʿbân and his successors as Fuʾâdî wanted them to be remembered in his own

times. Some might even suggest that Fuʾâdî “invented a new Şaʿbân” to act as
a “founding father,” based on an individual otherwise noteworthy only for his
piety, as a way of rallying his followers around a subsequently constructed sub-
branch of the Halveti order.
Our survey suggests there is some truth to this. Yet Fuʾâdî also comes across
as remarkably honest about his saint’s failings and problematic aspects; his audi-
ence needed to know these weaknesses and how to interpret them. In the end,
the true significance of a figure like ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî may lie in his efforts to
build an institutional framework for his sub-branch at the expense of the indi-
vidual charisma of the eponymous founder. Şaʿbân thus became a figure who
achieved an exalted status not just as a random act of God’s beneficence, but by
the success of his struggles to overcome his own weaknesses and failings. This
was in conscious reflection of the struggle of the Sufi novice who would seek to
emulate his example. The critical framework governing Fuʾâdî’s hagiography
was not the narrative itself, but the criteria that allowed his audience to recognize
the real saints among them. The success of the hagiography, the completion of
the tomb complex, and the spectacular growth of the order that went with them
demonstrated Fuʾâdî’s move toward a wide range of projects aimed at building
a more institutionalized mysticism. This reached an audience well beyond the
educated elites of his era.
Still, the question of the extent to which Fuʾâdî sought to extend his educational
message to all levels of society is difficult to gauge. After all, by his own stock
admissions, Fuʾâdî did not intend for his works, especially the more polemical
ones against the critics of Sufism, to be transmitted to just anyone. Nevertheless,
the circumstances dictated that a certain degree of popular mobilization to defend
the Muslim cult of saints was imperative. Anti-Sufi movements that coalesced
into the later Kâdızâdelis employed public preaching to large audiences that built
political support and put pressure on the ruling class and their supporters to pro-
scribe Halveti ritual. Without their own base of support, Ottoman Halvetis ran the
risk of becoming isolated and falling prey to the shifting fortunes of individual
rulers or grandees. Fuʾâdî’s primary contribution to Ottoman intellectual life was
not just to revive the defenses of the early Halveti community pioneered in the era
of the Halveti founders Cemâl el-Halvetî and Sünbül Efendi, or the supportive
decisions of key Ottoman scholarly notables like Saʿdeddîn Efendi and Zenbillî
ʿAlî. He also implanted aggressive ideological counter-strikes against the schol-
arly foundations of his opponents’ arguments among the wider public. Perhaps
purposely, these ideas disrupted the Ottoman framework of Islamic jurisprudence
and religious institutions, and in the process radicalized the opponents of the order
further. Still, the defensive and strident tone of much of his work foreshadowed
greater threats that the order would face later in the century.

Fuʾâdî proved to be a highly successful Halveti leader who played a key role
in firmly establishing, if not outright founding, an institutionalized sub-branch
of the order that would survive him into modernity. Yet by his own measure, he
might well have felt that his greatest success was to obscure his own contribu-
tion in favor of elevating the subject of his hagiography, Şaʿbân-ı Veli. Despite
occasional recognition of Fuʾâdî by later generations of Şaʿbâniye leaders like
Karabâş ʿAlî Veli,67 most followed Fuʾâdî’s own lead by looking back to the
inspiring story and character of the founder of the order. This is a trend that
continues in modern scholarship, and only comparatively recently have there
been signs of a willingness to look beyond the saints themselves to inquire about
the historiography of those who took up the task of preserving their memories.68
Yet before concluding, in casting one final glance in Fuʾâdî’s direction, I
cannot help but feel that having completed his story (and by extension, my own),
there is an element of irony present. Were he present, he might have found my
attempt to demand a more prominent place in the history of Ottoman religious
life for him embarrassing at best and misguided at worst. It is not just that my
interpretation of his importance to the Şaʿbâniye might detract from the legacy
of Şaʿbân-ı Veli that he had established. It would also establish for him the sort
of exalted presence that could act as a gateway to the sin of vanity, and distract
him from the greater goal of annihilating all worldly concerns in favor of unen-
cumbered remembrance of God. Yet after years spent evaluating his legacy, I
feel it is necessary to contravene his probable wish. The local Muslim commu-
nity in Kastamonu, along with an increasing number of contemporary religious
pilgrims who seek the blessings of the great saint Şaʿbân-ı Veli, must also offer
them to the formidable fifth successor who devoted his life to institutionalizing
his legacy, eternally resting just beyond the wall of the room they visit to offer
their prayers.
Notes
1 See, for example, George Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine State (New Brunswick,
NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1969), pp. 147–209 and 217–18; Ostrogorsky’s now dated
views have been updated by Timothy E. Gregory, A History of Byzantium (Malden, MA:
Blackwell Publishing, 2005), pp. 185–213. Both view the ecclesiastical controversy as a
distraction that, when removed, allowed for a resurgence of the Byzantine state. A more
thorough treatment of this still poorly understood phenomenon in Byzantine history can
be found in Anthony Bryer and Judith Herrin (eds), Iconoclasm (Birmingham: University
of Birmingham Centre for Byzantine Studies, 1995).
2 A description of the conflict between Kâdızâde Mehmed and ʿAbdülmecîd Sivâsî can be
found in Gündoğdu, pp. 85–117; see also MCZ-KZ, pp. 255–8 and a fuller discussion of
the range of issues debated by the two adversaries in KC-BT.

3 The three works that Fuʾâdî wrote exist in a defter preserved in the Atatürk Kitaplığı. The
shortest is only a couple of folios long, and was placed between the two longer tracts; see
ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî (d. 1044/1636), Devrân-ı sûfiyeʾnin cevâzına müteʿallık risâle, Atatürk
Kitaplığı, İstanbul, MS Osman Ergin 781/2, fols 39a–41b.
4 el-Fuʾâdî, Devrân-ı sûfiyeʾnin cevâzına müteʿallık risâle, fol. 40a–b.
5 One of the three tracts that Fuʾâdî produced commented on Cemâl el-Halvetî’s writings
on semâʿ and devrân in an Arabic-language work entitled Rawdât al-ʿulamâʾ wa jannât
al-ʿurafâʾ. This earlier work remains to be discovered; but see ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî (d.
1044/1636), Risâle fî hakk ed-devrân es-sûfiye, Atatürk Kitaplığı, İstanbul, MS Osman
Ergin 781/3, fols 42a–60b.
6 OF-DS, fol. 3a; Sünbül Sinân’s Arabic work defending Halveti practices has recently
been published in facsimile with modern Turkish translation; see Yusuf Sünbül Sinân,
Sünbül Efendi: Risâle-i Tahkîkiye, eds Müfti Yüksel and Ali Toker (İstanbul: Fulya
Yayınları, 2001).
7 OF-DS, fols 2a–38b. Halveti defenders often cited the arguments advanced in this text in
their writings; for a copy of it, see Zenbillî ʿAlî Cemâlî Efendi (d. 931/1525), Devrân-ı
sûfiyenin cevâzına dâʾir risâle, Süleymaniye Lib., İstanbul, MS M. Arif-M. Murad 221/2.
Copies of his fetvâs appear in other compilations of Halveti works also; see, for example,
those contained in Süleymaniye Library, MS Hkm. 438. For more on Zenbillî ʿAlî and his
connections to notable Sufi figures of his time, see RCR, pp. 197–224.
8 ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî, Devrân-ı sûfiyenin cevâzına dâʾir risâle, fols 40b–41a; the similarities
of this story to that of Sünbül and his detractor Sarı Gürz are striking, except that Sarı
Gürz was not drawn into the zikr circle. This divided him from his supporters, who had
previously supported his challenge to Sünbül; compare with LH, fols 217b–18b (448–9).
9 The work survives in multiple copies in Ottoman libraries, testifying to its perceived
importance. The oldest surviving copy is the Safed manuscript dating from the year
922/1516; see Hafız al-Dîn Muhammad b. Muhammad b. Shihâb al-Kurdarî al-Bazzâzî
(d. 827/1424), Al-Fatâwâ al-Bazzâziyya, Süleymaniye Lib., İstanbul, MS Amcazade
Hüseyin Paşa 245. It was also printed in the margin of the last three volumes of the
Fatâwâ al-ʿAlâmgîriyya, a collection of Hanafî legal decisions that the Mughal ruler
Awrangzeb (d. 1118/1707) had his scholars compile during his reign; see Mawlânâ
al-Shaykh Nizâm et al., Al-Fatâwâ al-hindiyya wa taʿarafa bil-fatâwâ al-ʿAlâmgîriyya
fî madhhab al-Imâm al-Aʿzam Abî Hanîfah (Beirut: Dâr al-Maʿrifah, 1973), vols 4–6,
margins.
10 We are able to trace this genealogy from the thirteenth/nineteenth-century biographical
work of the Indian Muslim scholar Muhammad ʿAbd al-Hayy al-Laknawî (d. 1303/1886),
a compilation of earlier biographical sources. The educational genealogy extending
from Kâdîkhân runs as follows: Muhammad b. ʿAbd al-Sattâr b. Muhammad al-Kurdarî
(d. 642/1244) SMuhammad b. Muhammad b. Nasr, Abûʾl-Fadl Hâfiz al-Dîn al-Kabîr
Muhammad b. Muhammad al-Bukhârî (d. 693/1294) SHusâm al-Dîn al-Hasan al-
Sighnaqî (d. 711 or 714/1311 or 1314) SJalâl al-Dîn b. Shams al-Khwarizmî al-Karalânî.
The latter two scholars seem to be connected to the Central Asian nomadic fringes of the
Islamic world; see LAK, pp. 100–1 and 106–7.
11 For more Timur’s campaigns, see Beatrice Forbes Manz, The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 60–2.
12 Ahmed Ibn Arabshah, Tamerlane or Timur the Great Amir, trans. J. H. Sanders, 2nd
edn (Lahore: Progressive Books, 1976), p. 299. See also Mehmet Fuat Köprülü, Islam in

Anatolia After the Turkish Invasion (Prolegomena), trans. and ed. Gary Leiser (Salt Lake
City, UT: University of Utah Press, 1993), p. 40 and n. 169.
13 Manz, The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane, pp. 16–18; see also Köprülü, Islam in Anatolia,
p. 40 and n. 166.
14 These details about Bazzâzî can be pieced together from al-Laknawî, p. 309. Bazzâzî’s
success there is no surprise, as the process of Islamization had begun several generations
before his arrival with the nominal conversion of Berke (d. 664/1266) and then Özbek
Khan (d. 742/1341); see Devin DeWeese, Islamization and Native Religion in the
Golden Horde: Baba Tükles and Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tradition
(University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), pp. 67–158.
15 We know of Bazzâzî’s departure date from a biographical entry about one of his students,
Ahmad b. ʿAbdullah al-Qirîmî; see LAK, p. 49.
16 LAK, p. 309. The biography of Abu Hanîfa has now been published as the second half
of a compilation; see Hafız al-Dîn Muhammad b. Muhammad b. Shihâb al-Kurdarî al-
Bazzâzî (d. 827/1424), Manâqib Abî Hanîfah (al-Cuzʾ al-Thânî) (Beirut: Dâr al-Kitâb
al-ʿArabî, 1981). Bazzâzî’s work may have been intended to supplement an earlier biog-
raphy written by al-Muwaqqaf b. Ahmad al-Makkî (d. 567/1172–3) published as the first
half of the aforementioned compilation.
17 Muhammad b. ʿAbd al-Rahman as-Sakhâwî (d. 1496), Al-Dawʾ al-lâmiʿ li-ahl al-qarn
al-tâsiʿ (Beirut: Dâr Maktabat al-Hayât, 1966), vol. 10, p. 37. Among the significant
scholars whom Sakhâwî linked to Bazzâzî are Ibn ʿArabshâh, who studied with him for
four years, and one Qâdî Saʿd al-Dîn b. al-Dayrî, who spoke highly of his knowledge. The
Egyptian scholar al-Suyûtî also related an anecdote that when all the books that he had
committed to memory were piled up on both sides of him, the stacks drew level with his
ears; see HSN, p. 54, margin.
18 For a synopsis of Molla Fenârî, see RCR, pp. 73–98.
19 Taşköprüzâde, p. 21.
20 See al-Laknawî, pp. 49, 143, 278–9 and 374–6; Mecdî also included a biographical entry
on Ibn ʿArabshâh, who was captured by Timur but subsequently escaped and studied with
Bazzâzî in the region of the Kipchak steppe; see HSN, pp. 73–4.
21 Al-Fatâwâ al-Bazzâziyya in al-Fatâwâ al-hindiyya, vol. 6, p. 338 in margin.
22 Bazzâzî was not the only source for potentially anti-Halveti decisions. Others included
Ebûsuʿûd Efendi, Kemâlpaşazâde, and others; they were quoted by the tenth/sixteenth-
century jurist, Mehmed Birgivî (d. 980/1573), an early inspirational figure for the
Kadızâdeli movement. See the remarks in CHVS, pp. 187–213.
23 Kırk Emre el-Hamîdî, Jâmiʿ al-fatâwâ, Süleymâniye Lib., İstanbul, MS İzmir 247, fols
156b–7a.
24 OF-DS, fols 8b–9a; for the biography of Muhammad b. Muhammad b. ʿAbd al-Karîm b.
Mûsâ Abûʾl-Yasar al-Pazdawî, see LAK, pp. 309–10.
25 This point is effectively and succinctly made in Süleyman Uludağ, İslam Açısından
Musikî ve Semâʿ, 2nd edn (Bursa: Uludağ Yayınları, 1992), pp. 171–203.
26 OF-DS, fols 2b–3a.
27 OF-DS, fol. 3a. However, there were multiple Molla ʿArabs in the Ottoman biographical
literature. One possibility is the short-lived head of the İstanbul müftülük during the reign
of Sultan Bayezid II, Molla ʿAlâʾ al-Dîn ʿAlî al-ʿArabî (d. 901/1496). But biographical
accounts about him suggest that he had good relations with ʿAlâʾ al-Dîn Halvetî; see
RCR, pp. 174–87. He was also friendly with Cemâl el-Halvetî; see Taşköprüzâde, p. 162.

Thus, the most likely candidate remains Mehmed b. ʿÖmer b. Hamza, also known as
“Vâʿiz Molla ʿArab” (d. 938/1531); RCR, pp. 247–9.
28 HSN, p. 413.
29 THV, fol. 23a and LH, fols 217b–19b (448–51). For more on Sarı Gürz, an enigmatic
figure who was tied closely to Selim’s campaigns against the Safavids and their support-
ers in Anatolia; see Taşköprüzâde, p. 181; he may also have been involved in the mass
killing of Safavid sympathizers during the 920/1514 campaign; see RCR, pp. 218–220.
30 The most recent editors and translators of Sünbül Sinân’s Risâlat al-tahqîqiyya, Ali Toker
and Müfti Yüksel, never note the unfinished state of the text; Yüksel and Toker, p. 20. In
addition, later copyists appear to have tried to impose their own structure upon the work to
get around the fact that the second chapter of the work simply trailed off, and a projected
third chapter was never written at all; see, for example, Sünbül Sinân Efendi (d. 936/1529),
Risalat al-tahqîqiyya, Süleymaniye Lib., İstanbul, MS Lâleli 3731/2, which rearranged
the table of contents by breaking the unfinished second chapter into two parts to create a
chapter two and three that have titles entirely different from the original manuscript.
31 This linkage was also established by Hulvî; see LH, fols 217a–20b (447–52).
32 The outlines of his life and career to this point can be discerned in Taşköprüzâde, pp.
247–8. “Enjoining the right and forbidding the wrong” (al-ʿamr bil-maʿrûf waʾl-nahy ʿan
al-munkar) often serves as a code for individuals who sought to impose more stringent
levels of “orthodoxy” upon their communities; see Michael Cook, Commanding the Right
and Forbidding the Wrong in Islamic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000), esp. pp. 316–30, for a brief discussion of the idea during Ottoman times.
33 This raises a problem of chronology – some sources hold that Cemâl el-Halvetî died as
early as 900/1494, but this does not square with the information given by Tâşköprüzâde
on Mehmed b. ʿÖmer. Therefore, Cemâl el-Halvetî’s death must have occurred at a later
date. For the conflicting accounts about Cemâl el-Halvetî’s date of death, see LH, fol.
435; RÖ-OT, pp. 42–5 and 52; and Küçükdağ, pp. 28 and 33.
34 This historiographical construction of Ottoman scholars has been advanced in recent
studies. However, there is no evidence that any of the scholars mentioned drew the work
of Ibn Taymiyya; their scholarship mostly cited figures from Central Asia and the Crimea.
However, see Ahmet Yaşar Ocak, “Ulema in the Ottoman Empire,” in Halil İnalcik and
Renda Günsel (eds), Ottoman Civilization (Ankara: Republic of Turkey Ministry of
Culture, 2003), esp. pp. 260–5.
35 Recent scholarship argues that the revival of Ibn Taymiyya’s work has taken place not
among the Ottomans, but in modern times as radical Islamist movements have appro-
priated his teachings to fit their own perceptions about modern problems; see SIV, pp.
94–107.
36 OF-DS, fol. 28b; Zenbillî ʿAlîʾs curt dismissal of Kırk Emre as being a product of Sultan
Murad II’s court in Edirne may suggest that he deemed the intellectual production of that
era as suspect for some unexplained reason.
37 Yüksel and Toker, pp. 21, 32, 39, and 46.
38 Meaning the four founders of the classical schools of Islamic law: Malik b. Anas, al-
Shâfiʿî, Abu Hanîfa, and Ahmad b. Hanbal.
39 OF-DS, fol. 7a–b; the work on which Fuʾâdî draws is probably Kemâlpaşazâde’s Risâla
fî tabaqat al-aʾimmat al-Hanafiyya wa risâla fî tabaqât al-mujtahidîn, although he also
wrote a Tabaqât al-fuqahâʾ; see Şamil Öçal, Kemal Paşazâdeʾnin Felsefî ve Kelâmî
Görüşleri (Ankara: T. C. Kültür BakanlığıYayınları, 2000), pp. 36 and 46.

40 OF-DS, fols 8a and 15a–b.
41 Öçal, p. 410; see also CHVS, p. 194. To downplay this decision, Hulvî claims in his
hagiography that Kemâlpaşazâde actually performed the semâʿ and devrân after being
inspired to solve a particularly difficult intellectual problem. He also claimed that Sarı
Gürz’s attempts to get a fetvâ ordering the execution of Sufis performing the ceremonies
backfired on him when Sünbül convinced Kemâlpaşazâde to destroy the copy of it tucked
into his turban; see LH, fols 217b–20a (448–51).
42 This opinion and those cited subsequently appear in the Safed manuscript of the Fatâwâ
in the Süleymaniye Library, MS Amcazade Hüseyin Paşa 245, fol. VIa. The citation
follows the lead of an anonymous librarian, who recognized that the folios were not part
the original work and gave them the roman numerals VI–X.
43 Bazzâziyya, fol. VIa–b.
44 These other works are briefly noted without further detail in Sünbül Efendi’s Risâlat
al-Tahqîqiyya and Zenbillî ʿAlî’s fetvâ. The questioner probably sought leave no base
uncovered in noting all the sources that Sufi leaders were rejecting.
45 This term might also be interpreted as “a severe flogging.”
46 Bazzâziyya, fol. VIb.
47 NVA, p. 199. It is difficult to interpret ʿAtâʾî’s poetic expression here, which may be an
allusion to al-Qurʾân 26:224–5. Despite the positive tone of his report as a whole, since
Fuʾâdî consistently referred to himself in the final couplet of many of his short poems, one
might also wonder if the final line was a subtle dig at someone he thought was a bit over-
bearing in his literary self-promotion. For comments on ʿAtâʾî’s work that lean toward
corroborating this interpretation, see BKTZ, p. 115.
48 Sünbül Sinân Efendi (d. 936/1529), Risalat al-tahqîqiyya, Süleymaniye Lib., İstanbul,
MS Kasidecizade 340, fol. 30a–b; the inclusion of Fuʾâdî and his immediate successor
links the text to a Şaʿbâniye copyist working between 1045/1636 and 1054/1644.
49 Hulvî’s goal was to unify the Sünbüliye and Gülşeniye branches by linking them in his
hagiography, but completely ignored the Şaʿbâniye in the process; see LH, esp. fols
296b–8a (627–30). More telling is the monumental eleventh/seventeenth-century com-
pilation of Hacı ʿAlî, the Tühfetüʾl-mucâhidîn. It devoted an entire section to Halveti
leaders from the order’s inception, tracking the same branches covered in Hulvî, and
adding figures from the Sivâsiye sub-branch along with several unaffiliated Halvetis. His
meticulous documentation only underscores the glaring omission of the Şaʿbâniye; see
HA-TFM, fols 517b–608a. More suspect still is a later biographical appendix compiled by
ʿUşakîzâde (d. 1136/1724) includes Sufis from various sub-branches of the Halveti, but
none from the Şaʿbâniye despite the prominence of several Şaʿbâniye shaykhs in İstanbul
by his own time; see Hans Joachim Kissling (ed.), ʿUšâqîzâdes Lebensbeschreibungen:
berühmter Gelehrter und Gottemänner des osmanischen Reiches im 17. Jahrhundert
(Zeyl-i Šaqâʾiq) (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1965), esp. the editor’s comments on pp.
vii–xiv.
50 See, for example, LH, fols 222b–3a and 230b (456–60 and 477).
51 KA, fols 497a–8a; see also the observations about Murad’s relationship with Şeyh Şücâʿ
in CF-MA, pp. 75 and 296 and the biographical entry on him in NVA, p. 365. There
was some substance to Mustafa ʿAli’s complaints, as Murad III’s correspondence in the
Kitâb-ı Manâmât reflects tension over Şüca’s activities.
52 THV, fol. 17a; for more information on the importance of this work for the development
of Halveti hagiographical literature, see JC-GTH, pp. 912–15.

53 A reference to Kalbî Efendi appeared in an entry about ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî in Bursalı
Mehmed Tâhir (d. 1926), Osmanlı Müellifleri, 3 vols (Ankara: Bizim Büro Basımevi,
2000), vol. 1, p. 119. Some of Fuʾâdî’s poetry was preserved in a divân compiled by
Kalbî, but may not have survived; see the brief remarks in NYIL, p. 98. The poem does
not directly confirm whether Kalbî was in İstanbul when he wrote it or if he dispatched it
from Kastamonu.
54 According to some reports, which perhaps exaggerate the scope of the destruction, the
fire destroyed nearly 20,000 homes and was centered in the areas of Galata and Pera; see
Robert Mantran, Histoire d’Istanbul (Paris: Fayard, 1996), p. 262.
55 For the Kâdızâdelis’ attacks on tobacco and its association with the policies of Sultan
Murad IV, see MCZ-KZ, pp. 256–7 and MCZ-PP, pp. 138–9. See also Kâtip Çelebi’s
remarks in KZ-BT, pp. 50–9. Even foreign observers like the Frenchman Jean Thévenot
had reservations about the dangers of tobacco during the dry season in İstanbul’s densely
packed urban environment; see Mantran, Histoire d’Istanbul, pp. 261–2.
56 The full text of the poem was appended to the end of a compilation containing a number
of his father’s works; see Kalbî Efendi, Bin Kırk Üç Senesinde İstanbulʾda Vâkiʿ Olan
İhrâk İçün Hasb-ı Hâl, Halk-ı ʿAlem ve Cenâb-ı Hakkʾa Tazarruʿ ʿAfv-ı Benî Adam ve
Târîhdir, Süleymaniye Lib., İstanbul, MS Hacı Mahmud Efendi 2287, fols 320b–1b.
57 Mantran, Histoire d’Istanbul, pp. 261–2.
58 Several decades later, the even more destructive impact of a fire in 1070/1660 provided
Ottoman political actors with an opportunity to take the more drastic steps in displacing
entire non-Muslim communities to restructure İstanbul’s urban space; see Marc David
Baer, “The Great Fire of 1660 and the Islamization of Christian and Jewish Space in
Istanbul,” IJMES 36:2 (May 2004), 159–81.
59 Kerim Kara argued that Çorumlu İsmâʿîl Efendi was a shaykh who avoided the more
esoteric aspects of mysticism; see KK-KV, pp. 175–6. Ziya Demircioğlu claimed that he
wrote several commentaries and treatises that were preserved in the Şaʿbân-ı Veli tomb’s
library; see ZD, p. 26.
60 Some sources incorrectly claim that Shaykh Mustafa Çelebi (d. 1070/1660), the seventh
successor to Şaʿbân, was Karabâş ʿAlî Veli’s primary shaykh; see, for example, ZD,
p. 28. Kerim Kara makes a convincing case for İsmâʿîl as the more logical choice, but
notes some sources suggest that Karabâş ʿAlî benefited also from connections with
Mustafa after his shaykh’s death; see KK-KV, pp. 68–71 and 176.
61 Initially, I had hoped to include a fourth section on Karabâş ʿAlî and his successors in the
present work, but had to eliminate it due to length considerations. I hope to return to it in
a future study.
62 For a full silsile of the Şaʿbâniye shaykhs up to the modern era, see Musa Seyfi
Cihangir, Şeyh Şaʿbân-ı Velî Hazretleriʾnin Hayatı ve Manevi Silsilesi (Kastamonu: Bilgi
Kastamonu Gazetesi, 1997), pp. 10–11.
63 The end of the tenth/sixteenth century initiated a demographic and resource crisis which
fueled the Celâlî revolts and likely threatened Kastamonu’s population, thus challeng-
ing leaders like Fu’âdî who struggled to uphold Ottoman social institutions; see Oktay
Özel, “Population Changes in Ottoman Anatolia during the 16th and 17th Centuries: The
‘Demographic Crisis’ Reconsidered,” IJMES 36:2 (May 2004), 183–205.
64 Recent scholarship on events leading up to the Reformation in European history has
argued that broadening access to issues raised through vernacular versions of sacred texts
led to increasing involvement of everyday people in controversies about religious affairs;

see, for example, Richard Duerden, “Equivalence or Power? Authority and Reformation
Bible Translation,” in Orlaith O’Sullivan (ed.), The Bible as Book: The Reformation
(London: The British Library & Oak Knoll Press, 2000), pp. 9–20, along with the intro-
ductory essay contributed by the editor.
65 The library was attached to the tomb itself and may have been established as early as
1019/1611. It was still functioning as late as 1922 and included a number of rare manu-
scripts at the time it was catalogued, mostly dealing with religious subjects; see Fazıl
Çiftçi, Kastamonu Camileri-Türbeleri ve Diğer Eserler (Ankara: Türk Diyanet Vakfı
Yayın Matbaacılık, 2006), p. 34, and also AKAK, p. 110.
66 One recent monograph confirms that paper-making continued in the Ottoman Empire well
beyond 1500. Unfortunately, the focus has always been on why Muslims did not adopt the
printing press until much later eras, rather than examining how the paper being produced
was used; see Jonathan M. Bloom, Paper Before Print: The History and Impact of Paper
in the Islamic World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 216–25. What
we see here may answer the latter question.
67 Karabâs ʿAlî cited Fuʾâdî’s work as an inspiration for his own Miyâr-ı Tarîk; however,
this work came to be attributed to Şaʿbân himself by its audience; see Mustafa Tatcı
and Cemâl Kurnaz (eds), Tasavvufî Gelenekte Miyârlar ve Karabâş-ı Veliʾnin Miyârı
(Ankara: Bizim Büro Basım Yayın Dağıtım, 2001), pp. 26–9 and 119.
68 See, for example, AKAK, pp. 61–4 and 69–71; Fuʾâdî’s contributions to the order merit
only a few short sections. More recent prosopographical catalogs have charted a founda-
tion for the further study of these minor figures; see NYIL, for example.

Conclusion
.
WHAT CAN THE ŞAʿBÂNi YE TEACH US
ABOUT TRANSITIONS IN THE EARLY
MODERN PERIOD OF WORLD HISTORY?
At this point, my hope is that the reader has come to appreciate the rich and
complex historical legacy that Ottoman religious and mystical sources have
left for us. They allow us to enrich the state-centric imperial narratives of the
universal historians, on the one hand, while allowing us to put a human face on
both Ottoman bureaucratic records and inscriptions locked in stone, on the other.
Moreover, in-depth tracing of the trajectory of the Şaʿbâniye and other branches
of the Halveti over the course of their history offers researchers a cautionary
note regarding facile generalizations about the positions or viewpoints that “the
Halveti order” would have on any given issue in their society. Individual shaykhs
and their orders were often quite different in their approaches, and frequently
revised or reinvented their traditions to reflect changes in their society. So given
this kaleidoscopic vision, what important conclusions can now be drawn about
the history of the Halveti order as whole?
Our examination of both extant and newly uncovered sources about the
Halveti indicates that we can now identify some of the elements involved in
the origin of the Halveti tradition with more clarity. This should not distract us
from the basic problem that the historical record suffers from gaps that require
further exploration, along with distortions that reflect the concerns of subsequent
generations of Muslims who made that record. But be that as it may, several
trends represented in the later medieval period of Islamic civilization do emerge
as foundations for the later Halveti order. The early figures in the Halveti silsile,
as articulated in works like Hulvî’s Lemezât, were spread across multiple Sufi
groups in the Mongol and post-Mongol context of Islamic history. One element
that emerges strongly out of that record was the medieval Suhrawardî family’s
project of extending membership in Sufi orders to broader groups of people than
292

Conclusion 293
earlier religio-mystical leaders had envisioned. This process suggests at least
a partial analogy to developments in Christianity in Europe from the tenth and
eleventh centuries onward that also sought to integrate the broad mass of the
population more firmly into the religious institutions of the Church. Yet this basic
framework of the classical age of Islamic civilization also came to be mixed with
a more charismatic type of Sufism represented by personalities like Muhammad
el-Halvetî, whose practices may have invoked a more ecstatic and sometimes
antinomian brand of Sufism that did not always meet with the approval of more
sober minded peers. Nevertheless, in a world overrun by Turco-Mongol nomads
whose reference points were not grounded in the Islamic civilization of the clas-
sical age, this mixture of traditions provided a bridge by which followings could
be built across both the remnants of established Muslim tradition and powerful
newcomers who held the reigns of military power.
Initially, the Halveti order that the Ottomans would inherit grew out of
regional grouping of religious leaders and family groupings based in the area of
Azerbaijan and its immediate hinterlands. Given the multiple disruptions that
this region of the Islamic world underwent in the wake of the Ilkhanid Mongol
state’s collapse, the order may well have acted as a source of stability and legiti-
macy. However, its regional character would broaden rapidly with the forced
movements of populations from Asia Minor to the east during the Timurid dep-
redations, and by the mid-ninth/fifteenth century a substantial part of the order’s
following was grounded in Anatolian roots; a factor which would prove decisive
when the rise of a hostile Shiʿite Safavid state would force many non-Anatolian
Halveti notables into exile from their traditional homelands. Nevertheless,
during this time a number of shaykhs, including Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî and his spir-
itual descendants, developed close links with political power that accelerated the
spread and influence of their teachings. This shift did not come without a good
deal of internal tension, however. A growing proliferation of potential successors
led the order to fragment, sometimes acrimoniously, into multiple sub-branches
that competed to establish themselves in the various cities and regions of the
Near East. Within the space of a few generations, the order’s Azerbaijanî roots
had spread hundreds of miles to the south and west; by the end of the eleventh/
seventeenth century, there were few places in the Sunnî world that did not have
Halveti representation of some kind. Moreover, the Halveti were able to periodi-
cally intersect their activities with the growth of the Ottoman Empire, and under
certain sultans, especially Bayezid II and Murad III, they received great esteem.
However, this rise to political prominence could provoke a backlash. Sultan
Selim I’s persecution of the order and its benefactors as a way of breaking with
his father’s legacy was the first indication that not everyone in Ottoman society
accepted the legitimacy of the new upstarts, even though they had recruited

members from prominent scholarly families like the Cemâlîs. Moreover, as
the Empire was forced to reorder its administrative structures and tactics in the
period of crisis that began at the end of the tenth/sixteenth century, an increas-
ingly puritanical backlash against a perceived lack of orthopraxy on the part of
Sufi orders like the Halveti grew stronger, in part due to the competition for posi-
tions and influence in Ottoman society.
Thus, interpreting the growth and development of Sufi orders like the Halveti
in the Ottoman Empire requires a great deal of caution, for many of the sources
that we use to narrate their history emerge out a period from the late tenth/
sixteenth to twelfth/eighteenth century where concerns about the legitimacy of
Sufi orders like the Halveti had become increasingly prevalent. When we look
closely at the case of Şaʿbân-ı Veli, founder of the Şaʿbâniye branch of the
order, we find that the sources situate his activities in the pattern of in-migration
that marked the Halveti shaykhs into the Ottoman Empire during the preced-
ing century. Like many of the Halveti shaykhs of the tenth/sixteenth century
Ottoman context, he traced his spiritual lineage back to Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî
through some of his most noted and authoritative descendants, such as Cemâl el-
Halvetî. However, unlike the more well-known Sünbüliye or Gülşeniye branches
of the order, Şaʿbân’s teacher was a provincial and lesser known successor to
Cemâl el-Halvetî who did not attract the attention of Ottoman elites. Therefore,
it is noteworthy that Şaʿbân’s hagiography also invoked other local sources of
legitimacy to buttress his claims to spiritual authority. For example, previous
lesser known Halveti representatives such as Seyyid Sünnetî Efendi, who had
first made inroads into the area during the previous century, were incorporated
into the order’s framework and teachings. Moreover, other notable figures from
other Sufi groups in the Kastmonu region, such as Benli Sultan and ʿÎsâ Dede
Bayrâmî, also find roles in the hagiography as legitimizing forces. The life of
Şaʿbân-ı Veli demonstrated that it was frequently local sources of spiritual
power that weighed heaviest in establishing the legitimacy of a saint-to-be.
Nevertheless, the style and methodology of Sufism that Şaʿbân practiced in
Kastamonu rejected a prominent public profile, and sought anonymity and with-
drawal from the wider world. This did not necessarily reflect the teachings of his
predecessors in the Halveti silsile, for figures like Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî and Cemâl
el-Halvetî had not eschewed leadership roles. Moreover, at the time that the nar-
ratives that made up Şaʿbân’s hagiography were being reified by his successors,
Şaʿbân’s rejection of the public sphere increasingly looked to be at odds with
the requirements of the present. Even in Şaʿbân’s own time, his hagiography
indicates that he struggled with occasional dissenting movements among his
own followers as his leadership role grew. Moreover, opponents of Sufism could
point out that he never made the pilgrimage, or that he or his followers engaged

Conclusion 295
in practices that resembled those of fortune-tellers, soothsayers or other “pseudo-
Sufi” practitioners. Still, by the end of his life he had developed a local following
who came to revere him for his piety, modesty, and ability to help them confront
social problems such as illness or falling into extreme poverty. A few of those
contemporaries went on to achieve positions of power in the Ottoman context
that were greater than that which Şaʿbân achieved, such as Muharrem Efendi and
Küreli Mehmed Çelebi. Indeed, Muharrem Efendi would play a critical role in
establishing Şaʿbân as a figure of wider renown, and in cementing his sainthood
for future generations of Kastamonu’s population by delivering a powerful and
moving funeral oration that captured the imagination of younger members of the
community like ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî.
Şaʿbân’s growing profile by the end of his life, however, still remained
overwhelmingly local, and Muharrem Efendi’s funeral oratory indicated that
even many of his fellow Kastamonu denizens were unaware of his presence.
The process of building up his small local community into a regional and later
supra-regional Muslim mystical movement was left to his successors. Managing
the transition to a post-Şaʿbân world proved to be rocky: Şaʿbân’s first chosen
successor, ʿOsmân Efendi, died shortly after he did, and within a decade his
second, Hayreddîn Efendi, had also died. Thus, the successors of Şaʿbân-ı Veli
came to be defined primarily by their uniqueness rather than similarity – ʿÖmer
el-Fuʾâdî’s first shaykh was a respected scholarly figure in the region, while his
second came from a small village and was primarily noted for his poverty and
living in cave outside the town before being elevated to lead the order. Still, this
had a positive outcome on balance, in that what came to define a Halveti shaykh
was his devotion to the order’s leaders and principles. In addition, another strik-
ing element emerges out of a study of this period of the order’s history as well,
which was the degree to which highly localized figures, such as Muhyiddîn’s
teacher Mahmûd Efendi of Araç, had begun to produce scholarly tracts aimed at
defending the order and its practices to a wider audience.
These elements would culminate in the career of ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî, a figure
whom I argue is the true founder and creator of what would come to be defined
as the Şaʿbâniye branch of the Halveti order. Inheriting the order in the wake of
a string of political and economic problems that bedeviled the Ottoman popula-
tion in the last decades of the tenth/sixteenth century, he set out to renew and
expand its foundation to deal with the growing challenges of the period. Facing
opposition from anti-Sufi factions in his society who tried to prevent the build-
ing of a tomb complex over Şaʿbân-ı Veli’s grave, he recognized the need to
confront this opposition forcefully and publicly. The result of his initial flurry of
activity that followed his accession to leadership in the order in 1013/1604 was
the Menâkıb-ı Şaʿbân-ı Veli, a work which reinvigorated the order and laid down

a simple and accessible ideological template that could help guide its following
in interpreting and emulating the life of their founding figure. ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî
proved to have a great deal of talent in addressing the various social groups that
made up Ottoman society, and tailored his works to enlist them in defending the
order and its leaders, both from detractors and false teachers who made mysti-
cism an easy target. Interestingly, some of Fuʾâdî’s activities suggest that he was
especially nervous about a potential backlash over the life and activities of the
controversial Şaʿbâniye dervish Shaykh Şücâʿuddîn, whose closeness to politi-
cal power had raised questions about relations between mystics and the Ottoman
state. In the end, through a shrewd exploitation of local and grandee sentiment in
the region, Fuʾâdî oversaw the building of a physical infrastructure on the out-
skirts of Kastamonu that could serve as a center for regional Şaʿbâniye activities
However, unlike many other Ottoman hagiographers, ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî did
not conclude his activities with the writing of a hagiography and the building
of Şaʿbân’s tomb complex. He went on to write a number of commentaries and
short tracts whose goal was to simplify and introduce the basic teachings and
mechanics of the Halveti order to its devotees at various stages of the process.
Therefore, he represents an outstanding example of a major shift that was occur-
ring in Muslim mystical thought from the end of the tenth/sixteenth century.
While we have seen that earlier leaders of the order did not shy away from build-
ing large followings, the most significant members of the group were marked by
significant religious education or had some form of elite background. The con-
tribution of mystics like Fuʾâdî was to open the gateway to mystical thought and
sources to a much wider audience by writing it in the more accessible language
of Turkish to allow for wider circulation. Even given low literacy levels at this
time, it is clear that the works were meant to be read out to broader audiences
to enlist them as activists in the order’s support network. Moreover, in the case
of growing controversies over Halveti practices, Fuʾâdî’s work proved instru-
mental at building a defense for the clothing, litanies, and especially the devrân
ceremony that marked the order. The rapid spread of the Şaʿbâniye beyond its
Kastamonu-based origins to İstanbul and the Balkans by the end of the century
stands as testament to the success of Fuʾâdî and other successors like him.
However, it can also be argued that in the process of developing an effective
defense for the order and its practices, Fuʾâdî also raised the stakes in the con-
flict with its critics by attacking the legitimacy and legacy of otherwise respected
Muslim scholars, such as al-Bazzâzî, who had found a place in Ottoman jurispru-
dential culture from its earliest times.
It is my hope that these and other colorful aspects of the history of
the Şaʿbâniye branch of the Halveti order between the eighth/fourteenth and
eleventh/seventeenth century will convince Ottomanists and scholars of the

Conclusion 297
history of Islamic thought and institutions to pursue these and the many other
unanswered questions raised by the extraordinarily rich history of Ottoman mys-
ticism. Many of the other orders, and indeed many of the other sub-branches of
the Halveti order await a detailed treatment. But the study of the transformation
of Ottoman Muslim mystical thought may well also have ramifications beyond
the field of Islamic studies.
It is true that some scholars have wisely cautioned that the study of mysti-
cal traditions in a wider comparative framework can mislead the researcher
into seeing connections that do not exist, or that coincide only due to extremely
different trends in the intellectual framework of a given religious context.1
In addition, anthropological and comparative studies of religion have created
scholarship tainted by hegemonic discursive forms that define religion according
to its context in the thought of the Enlightenment period, denying the subject a
voice in the construction of his/her own beliefs.2 While these warnings are well
founded, and must be taken into account in any serious comparative study, it
does not preclude a comparative examination of where transitions like the one
discussed in this work fit on a more global stage.
For example, future inquiries might ask whether the changes that marked the
various branches of the Halveti order, along with its increasing difficulties with
ideological and factional forces critical of its rituals and practices, might find
echoes in the intellectual and religious history of Christian Europe during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Halveti struggle with the Kâdızâdeli
movement suggests at least a passing resemblance to then contemporary
Catholicism’s lengthy conflict with the rise of Protestantism, with its ideologi-
cal rejection of intermediaries between the believer and God as embodied in the
concept of the priesthood.3
Another point might be that some anthropologists have argued for a cyclical
nature in a given religious community’s understanding of its religious context.
The rejection of external forms and modes of expression are a hallmark of
periodic movements of religious renewal, and societies that develop strong
systems of shared classifications, combined with strong societal pressures on the
individual, react to changes in the cultural context by attempting to squeeze out
“innovations” which do not fit into their system of established categories.4 The
rise of the Halveti order and the challenges they faced in defending their mysti-
cal traditions vis-à-vis the inherited apparatus of classical Islamic thought and its
more puritanical interpreters, can add to our understanding of the clashes caused
by movements of religious purification. Given the growing prominence – some
might say danger – of puritanical religious movements in modern times, further
study of groups like the Halveti could shed light on the question of whether
mystical belief systems have a critical role to play in the intellectual production

of religious traditions around the world, in contrast to attempts to paint them
as being little more than a doomed remnant of the intellectual heritage of the
pre-modern world. An overview of the Şaʿbâniye in the thirteenth/nineteenth-
century Ottoman context suggests that they may have been even stronger on the
eve of modernity than they were in the period covered by this study. Moreover,
in addition to a number of other Sufi orders, revivals of Halveti belief and prac-
tice have accompanied growing democracy and openness in Turkish public life.5
All of this suggests that the transformation of Muslim mystical thought that
unfolded between the appearance of ʿÖmer el-Halvetî and the death of ʿÖmer
el-Fuʾâdî remains very much an ongoing and unfinished process. The final chap-
ters of that story, however, remain to be written by others. It is my fervent hope
that the rich legacy left by the Halveti order that has emerged in this work can
convince some of its readers to undertake those tasks in the future.
Notes
1 Steven T. Katz (ed.), “The ‘Conservative’ Character of Mystical Experience,” Mysticism

and Religious Traditions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 3–60.
2 This argument has been most articulately advanced by Talal Asad, Genealogies of
Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore, MD:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993).
3 Francis Clark, Eucharistic Sacrifices and the Reformation, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell
Press, 1967).
4 See, for example, the work of Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology,
2nd edn (London: Routledge, 1996).
5 Nathalie Clayer, “Shabâniyya,” EI2, vol. 9, p. 155.

Appendix I
. . .
THE HALVETi Si LSi LE ACCORDING TO
HULVÎ’S LEMEZÂT
Table 1 Halveti silsile from its eleventh to its twenty-second successors

(c. 1150–1450)
Name of shaykh (no. in chain) Geographical contexts S Date of death
moves
Kutbüddîn Ebherî (11)* Ebher (Samarqand) S 622/1225
Merağa S Azerbaijan S
Baghdâd S Damascus S
Nishapur
Mahmud Fakîh (11–1) Fayyum (Egypt) S 643/1245
Damascus S Alexandria
Muhammad b. Mübarekşâh-i Ethiopia S Egypt S 660/1261
Hızrî (11–2) Damascus
Rükneddîn-i Kirmânî (11–3)* Kerman S Baghdâd S 656/1258
Merağa S Tabriz S
Baghdâd
Rükneddîn Sincâsî (12) Sincâs S Tabriz/Merağa 628/1231
SBaghdâd
Evhadüddîn-i Kirmânî (12–1) Kerman S Baghdâd 615/1219
Şahâbüddîn Maktûl (12–2) Aleppo S Damascus 589/1193
(587/1191)
Şemseddîn-i Tebrizî (12–3) Tabriz S Konya 645/1247
Şahâbüddîn-i Tebrizî (13) Tabriz S Baghdad S 702/1302
Hajj S Tabriz
299


moves
İbrâhîm-i Hemedanî el-Irakî Hemedan/Iraq S India 709/1309
(13–1) S Konya S Damascus
S Egypt S Tabriz S
Kayseri S Tokat S
Damascus
Hüseyin-i Saʿdâd (13–2)* Herat 729/1328
Muhammad el-Yemenî (13–3) Aden S Mekka S Aden 759/1357(?)
Cemâleddîn-i Ezherî (14)* Shiraz S Egypt S Tabriz 760/1358
S Gilan
Muhammad el-Kesîre (14–1) Gilan (Keştâsûf) 780/1378
Seyyid ʿAlî (14–2) Tabriz S Khurasan 720/1320
(Herat)
Ebuʾl-Kâsım (14–3) Gilan 762/1360
İbrâhîm Zâhid Gîlânî (15)* Gilan S Shiraz S 705/1305
Lahîcân S Ardabil S
Gilan
Safîyüddîn el-Erdebilî (15–1) Ardabil S Gilan S 760/1358
Merağa S Ardabil (735/1334)
Ahî Yûsuf (15–2) Şirvân S Niğde S Tabriz 708/1308
S Herat
Pîr Hikmet Şirvânî (15–3)* Şamahî S Tabriz S 736/1335
Lahîcân S Gence
Muhammad el-Halvetî Khwarizm S Herat 780/1378
Khwarizmî (16) (Gazergâh) (750/1351)
Muhammad el-Karsî (16–1)* Kars S Herat S Kars 803/1401
Kütbüddîn Tebrizî (16–2)* Şirvân/Merağa S Egypt 818/1415
S Şirvân S İznik
Osmân-ı Şirvânî (16–3) Şirvân S Tabriz S 830/1426
Khwarizm S pilgrimage
Pîr ʿÖmer el-Halvetî (17)* Gilan/Lahîcân S Şirvân 800/1397
S Herat S Khoy S (750/1349)
Egypt S Tabriz
Seyfeddîn el-Halvetî (17–1) Tabriz S Baghdâd S 813/1410
Herat (Gazergâh)

Appendix I 301

moves
Ebu Yezîd-i Pûrânî (17–2) Pûrân (in Azerbaijan) 862/1457
Zâhireddîn el-Halvetî (17–3) Transoxiana S Khwarizm 800/1397
S Merağa S Herat
(Gazergâh)
Ahî Mîrem el-Halvetî (18)* Şirvân S Kırşehir S 812/1409
Herat (Gazergâh)
Ebu Tâlib el-Mekkî (18–1) Mekka S Kırşehir S 824/1421
Egypt S Kırşehir
Pîr Tevekkül (18–2) Sinop S Herat S Sinop 837/1433
Amr-ı Rabbanî (18–3)* Şirvân S Baghdâd S 848/1444
Herat S Şirvân
İzzeddîn Türkmânî (19) Şamâhî S Herat S 828/1425
Merağa
ʿÖmer-i Şirvânî (19–1) Şamâhî S Tabriz S 831/1427
Merağa
İbrâhîm el-Kubâdî (19–2) Lahîcân S Şirvân S 850/1446
Egypt (hajj)
Baba Resûl-i Rûmî (19–3)* Hersek S Merağa S 840/1436
Niğde
Sadrüddîn-i Hıyâvî (20) Şirvân 860/1455
Şeyh Pîrzâde (20–1)* Tabriz S Şirvân 855/1451
İbrâhîm-i Şirvânî (20–2) Şirvân S Sivas S Tabuk 867/1462
(hajj)
Pîr İlyâs el-Amasî (20–3) Amasya S Şirvân S 837/1434
Amasya
Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî (21) Şirvân S Şamâhî S Baku 869/1465
Pîr Şükrüllah Halife (21–1) Sandıklı (Anadolu) S 868/1464
Şirvân S Baghdâd S hajj
S Baku
ʿAlâüddîn el-Rûmî (21–2) Aydın S Baku S Edirne 867/1463
S Larende
Habîb-i Karamânî (21–3) Niğde S Baku S Ankara 902/1497
S Karaman S Aydın
Muhammad el-Erzincânî (22) Erzincan S Şirvân S 869/1465
Erzincan (879/1474)


moves
Pîr Ahmed Erzincânî (22–1)* Erzincan S İstanbul S 870/1466
Erzincan (>877/1473)
Pîr Fethullah (22–2) Kastamonu S Tabriz S 861/1456
Khurasan S Tabriz S (>879/1474)
Erzincan
Tâcüddîn İbrâhîm el-Halvetî Kayseri S Erzincan S 860/1455
(22–3) Kayseri
Cemâl el-Halvetî (23)* Aksaray S Karaman S 905/1499
Tokat S Erzincan S
Amasya S İstanbul
bold type: successor (primary shaykh)

S: known movement from one place to another
italic type: a location in Asia Minor
*: known political involvement or conflict with Mongols, Timurids or
Ottomans
(date): alternative, better-known date of death as opposed to that given by
Hulvî

Appendix II
. . .
THE Si LSi LE OF THE ŞAʿBANi YE ORDER
Table 2 The silsile of Şaʿbân-ı Veli down to the middle of the eleventh/
seventeenth century
Cemâl el-Halvetî, “Çelebi Halîfe”

(d. 905/1499)
T
Hayreddîn Tokâdî Seyyid Sünnetî Ef.
(d. 932/1525) (d. 863/1459)
T T
Şaʿbân-ı Veli d Muzaffereddîn Efendi
(d. 976/1569) (d. ?/?)
T
ʿOsmân Efendi
(d. 976/1569)
T
Hayreddîn Efendi
(d. 987/1579)
T
ʿAbdülbâkî Efendi
(d. 997/1589)
T
Muhyiddîn Efendi d Mahmûd Efendi
(d. 1012/1604) (d. ?/?)
T
303

ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî
(d. 1045/1636)
T
Çorumlu İsmâʿîl Efendi S Karabâş ʿAlî Veli
(d. 1057/1647) (d. 1097/1686)
T
Mustafa Çelebi
(d. 1070/1660)

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INDEX OF PERSONS
ʿAbd al-Rahman Jâmî (d. 898/1492), 27, 29, ʿAli b. Abû Tâlib (d. 40/661), 18, 23–5, 29,
33–5, 44, 47n, 71, 81n, 127, 151n, 238 45n, 79, 101, 106n, 132–3, 153n, 217,
Abdülbâkî Efendi (d. 997/1589), 171–6, 258
181–2, 184, 188, 191n, 192n, 200–3, ʿAlî b. Buzghush (d. 678/1279), 44
205, 219n, 241, 249, 252, 263n, 303 ʿAlî Dede, 118, 149n
ʿAbdülmecîd Şirvânî (d. 972/1565), 59 Amîr Çoban (d. 728/1327), 35–6, 47n
ʿAbdülmecîd Sivâsî Efendi (d. 1049/1639), Amr-ı Rabbanî (d. 848/1444), 41, 301
269, 285n
Abu Bakr (first caliph, d. 12/634), 71, 106n, Baba Resûl-i Rûmî (d. 840/1437), 52,
165–6, 255 301
Abû Hamîd al-Ghazâlî (d. 505/1111), 27, Bahâ’üddîn (father of Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî),
129, 152n, 254 55–6
Abu Hanifa (d. 150/767), 25, 53, 253–4, Bayâzid al-Bistami (d. 261/875), 25, 161–3
272, 276 Bayezid I (Ottoman Sultan, d. 805/1403),
Abu’l Najib ʿAbd al-Qâhir al-Suhrawardî 41, 52, 76
(d. 563/1168), 24, 26–7 Bayezid II (Ottoman Sultan, d. 918/1512),
Abu Saʿîd (İlkhanid ruler, d. 736/1335), 31, 68–72, 74, 76, 82n, 83n, 84n, 271,
35–6 274, 287n, 293
Abû Tâlib al-Makkî (d. 824/1421), 42 al-Bazzâzî, Hâfiz al-Dîn Muhammad b.
ʿAcem ʿAlî (wrestler), 172 Shihâb al-Kurdarî (d. 827/1424),
Ahmad al-Ghazâlî (d. 520/1126), 27 271–3, 275–7, 287n, 296
Ahmed el-Hiyâlî (d. 980/1571), 64, 77 Benli Sultan (d. 972/1565), 112–13, 125,
Ahmed-i Jâm (d. 535/1141), 31 127, 145, 147, 148n, 151n, 159, 182,
Akhî Evrân (d. 854/1450), 41 202, 294
Akhî Mîrem el-Halvetî (d. 812/1410), 18,
30, 40–4, 51, 301 Çandarlı İbrâhîm Paşa (d. 905/1499), 60
Akhî Yûsuf (d. 708/1308), 42, 48n, 300 Çelebi Sultan Mehmed I (Ottoman ruler,
ʿAlâeddîn el-Halvetî (d. 867/1463), 60–1, d. 824/1421), 60, 84n
66, 70, 82n Cem Sultan (d. 900/1495), 68–70
321

Cemâl el-Halvetî (Çelebi Halife, d. Hızır (Khidr, prophet), 60–1, 82n, 97, 105n,
905/1499), 19, 30, 32, 65–73, 84n, 99, 123, 168
101, 104, 105n, 147, 149n, 184, 191n, Hızır Bâlî, 60–2
217, 238, 243, 270, 274, 279, 284, Hulvi, Mahmûd Cemâleddîn (d. 1054/1654),
286n, 287n, 288n, 294, 302, 303 22–4, 26–9, 32–44, 45n, 46n, 47n, 48n,
Cemâleddîn-i Ezherî (d. 760/1358), 33, 300 52–4, 56–8, 60–1, 63–5, 67–8, 73, 78,
Chinggis Khan (d. 624/1227), 35, 47n, 271 81n, 82n, 83n, 84n, 86n, 146, 279,
Çivîzâde (Ottoman jurist, d. 954/1547), 288n, 289n, 292, 299–302
125–6, 151n, 174 Hüseyin-i Saʿdâd (d. c. 718/1318), 33, 300
Clayer, Nathalie, 17, 85n, 154n, 174, 298n
Çorumlu İsmâʿîl Efendi (d. 1057/1647), Ibn al-ʿArabî, Muhyî al-Dîn (d. 637/1240),
279, 282, 290n, 304 33, 53, 74, 126, 145–6, 150n, 151n,
152n, 154n, 155n, 190n, 220n, 254,
Dâvud Mahmûd al-Kayseri (d. c. 750/1350), 259, 266n
252, 266n Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328), 208, 220n,
Dede ʿÖmer Rüşenî (d. 892/1487), 59–64 266n, 275, 288n
DeWeese, Devin, 31–3, 46n, 48n, 151n İbrâhîm Beg (Karamanoğlu ruler, d.
869/1464), 66, 84n
Ebusüʿûd Efendi (Ottoman jurist, d. İbrâhîm-i Gülşeni (d. 940/1534), 19, 49n,
980/1573), 124, 150n, 171, 190n, 191n, 59–60, 62–5, 72, 77, 81n, 82n, 83n,
229, 251, 287n 134, 153n, 243
Erzerumî Hasan Dede, 124, 135 İbrâhîm-i Hemedanî (Fakhr al-Dîn) el-Irakî
Evhadüddîn-i Kirmânî (d. 615/1219), 33, (d. 688/1289), 33, 300
299 İbrâhîm-i Kubâdî (d. 850/1446), 53, 301
Evliyâ Şücâʿ, 131–2, 187, 206 İbrâhîm Zâhid Gilânî (d. 705/1305), 29–31,
Eyüb Halife, 114, 137, 158 33–4, 36–7, 39–41, 44, 46n, 57, 300
ʿÎsâ Dede Bayrâmî, 111–13, 294
Gazanfer Dede (d. 974/1567), 74, 85n, 149n İsrâfîlzâde, Molla Fahruddîn (Ottoman
Gelibolulu Mustafa ʿAlî (d. 1009/1601), 65, jurist, d. 943/1537), 125, 151n
69, 123, 201, 279 İzzeddîn-i Türkmânî (d. 828/1425), 30,
52–5, 81n
Habib al-ʿAjamî/Habîb-i ʿAcemî (d.
130/748), 25, 128, 152n Junayd al-Baghdâdî (d. 297/910), 24–7,
Hacı Halife Kastamonî (d. 895/1489), 66 257
Hacı İlyâs Efendi (son of Hayreddîn Efendi),
116–17, 168–71, 182, 190n Kâdızâde Mehmed (d. 1045/1635), 78, 149n,
Halîl Paşa (Grand Vizier, d. 1040/1631), 219n, 248, 262n, 264n, 269, 285n
235–6 Kalbî Efendi b. ʿÖmer el-Fu’âdî, 280–2,
Hasan al-Basri (d. 110/728), 25–6, 45n, 249, 290n
265n Karabâş ʿAlî Veli (d. 1097/1686), 89, 282,
Hayreddîn Efendi (d. 987/1589), 117, 157, 285, 290n, 291n, 304
168–71, 174, 182, 187–8, 295, 303 Kastamonulu Muharrem Efendi (d.
Hayreddîn Tokâdî (d. 932/1525), 99–102, 984/1576), 112, 125–7, 151n, 159–63,
104, 106n, 108, 112, 116, 125, 147, 187, 189n, 295
186–7, 247, 279, 303 Kemâlpaşazâde (Ottoman jurist, d.
Himmet Dede (father of ʿÖmer el-Fu’âdî), 940/1534), 151n, 275–6, 287n, 288n,
199–200, 260n 289n

Khalîl Allah I (Şirvânşâh ruler, d. 219n, 224, 235, 241, 250, 252, 282,
866/1462), 55, 59 295, 303
Kırk Emre el-Hamîdî, 273, 275, 288n Muhyi-yi Gülşenî (d. 1014/1606), 62–4,
Koca Mustafa Paşa (Grand Vizier, d. 77–8, 82n, 83n, 86n, 90, 92n, 153n
918/1512), 70–3 Murad II (Ottoman ruler, d. 855/1451), 273,
Konrapalı Muslihuddîn Efendi, 99, 101, 275, 288n
103–4, 109, 118 Murad III (Ottoman ruler, d. 1003/1595),
Küreli Mehmed Çelebi, 124–5, 130, 150n, 19, 23, 76–8, 171, 175, 185, 188, 203,
151n, 200, 295 205–8, 210, 215, 221n, 225, 227, 261n,
Kütbüddîn Ebherî (d. 577/1181), 27, 33, 267n, 279, 289n, 293
299 Muslihuddîn Merkez Efendi (d. 959/1552),
Kütbüddîn Tebrizî (d. 818/1415), 42, 48n, 74–6, 106n, 149n
300 Muslihuddîn Nûreddînzâde (d. 982/1574),
174, 201–2, 219n
Lâmiʿî Çelebi (d. 938/1532), 29–32, 84n Mustafa Dede, 119–20, 183
Mahmûd Efendi of Araç, 176–9, 181, 192n, Najm al-Dîn Muhammad al-Ghaytî (d.
193n, 250–1, 295, 303 984/1576), 231, 262n
Mamshâd al-Dinâwarî (d. 299/912), 25–6 Nakkâş ʿAlî Pasa, 29
Mansûr al-Hallâj (d. 309/922), 25, 167 al-Nâsir li-Dîn Allah (caliph, d. 622/1225),
Maʿruf al-Karkhî (d. 200/815), 25 27–8
Mehmed II (Ottoman ruler, d. 886/1481), Nasûh Paşa (Grand Vizier, d. 1023/1614),
61–2, 66–70, 81n, 84n, 94, 238, 250 225, 234, 260n
Mehmed III (Ottoman ruler, d. 1011/1603), Nasûhî Efendi (d. 1130/1718), 89, 91n,
184–5, 206–8, 210 153n
Mehmed Paşa (Grand Vizier of Mehmed II, Necmeddîn Hasan Efendi (d. 1019/1611),
d. 886/1481), 68–70 37, 172, 191n
Molla ʿArab Mehmed b. ʿÖmer (d. Nevʿîzâde ʿAtâ’î (d. 1045/1635), 99, 101,
938/1531), 61, 70, 83n, 273–5, 287n 103, 125–7, 152n, 278–9, 289n
Muhammad, the Prophet (d. 10/632), 9,
15–16, 18, 23–5, 41, 56–7, 78, 82n, ʿÖmer el-Fu’âdî (d. 1044/1636), 89–91,
94–6, 98, 105n, 106n, 116, 128, 132–3, 94–101, 103–4, 105n, 106n, 108–12,
148n, 150n, 152n, 153n, 160, 165–6, 114–18, 120–4, 127–36, 138–47, 148n,
174, 177–8, 190n, 193n, 217, 228–9, 149n, 150n, 152n, 153n, 154n, 155n,
231, 236, 240–1, 244, 251–2, 256, 258, 156–7, 159–60, 162–77, 179–86, 188,
265n, 266n, 274 189n, 190n 191n, 197–218, 219n, 220n,
Muhammad al-Dinawari (d. 370/980?), 26 221n, 222n, 223–5, 227–60, 261n,
Muhammad el-Erzincânî (d. 879/1474), 59, 262n, 263n, 264n, 265n, 266n, 267n,
66–8, 301 268–79, 281–5, 286n, 288n, 289n,
Muhammad el-Halvetî (d. 751/1350), 30–7, 290n, 291n, 295–6, 298, 304
40–2, 44, 47n, 293, 300 ʿÖmer-i Şirvânî (d. 831/1428), 52–4, 301
Muhammad al-Jilvânî, 53–4 ʿÖmer Kethüdâ (d. 1020/1611), 223–5, 228,
Muhammad Nazmî Efendi (d. 1112/1701), 232–5, 260n, 262n
58–9 ʿÖsmân Efendi (d. 976/1569), 139, 157–8,
Muhammad Rükkî (d. 903/1498), 58 165–70, 187–8, 190n, 295, 303
Muhyiddîn Efendi (d. 1012/1604), 128, ʿÖsmân II (Ottoman ruler, d. 1031/1622),
176–85, 188, 192n, 193n, 203–6, 208, 231–2, 235–6, 262n, 263n

Pîr Ahmed (d. after 878/1473), 67–8 Sarı Gürz Nûreddîn (d. 926/1520), 126, 274,
Pîr Fethullah (d. after 879/1474), 68, 184, 286n, 288n, 289n
301 Selîm I (Ottoman ruler, d. 926/1520), 65,
Pîr İlyâs el-Amâsî (d. 837/1434), 43, 52, 72–4, 118, 190n, 192n, 273–4, 288n,
54, 68 293
Pîr ʿÖmer el-Halvetî (d. 750/1349 or Seyfeddîn el-Halvetî (d. 813/1410), 30, 33,
800/1397), 18, 30, 33, 35–42, 44, 47n, 300
120, 149n, 217, 222n, 256, 298, 300 Seyyid Muzaffereddîn Efendi, 96, 303
Pîr Sükrullah Halife (d. after 868/1465), 58, Seyyid Seyfullah Kâzım b. Nizâmeddîn (d.
82n 1009/1601), 149n, 177–8, 192n, 193n
Pîr Tevekkül (d. 837/1433), 42–3 Seyyid Sünnetî Efendi (d. 863/1459), 94–7,
Pirî Paşa (Grand Vizier of Selim I), 65 109, 111, 113–14, 120–1, 137, 154n,
Pîrzâde Muhammad Takiyüddîn (d. after 158, 186, 189n, 190n, 205, 217, 294,
860/1456), 54–6, 81n 303
Shah İsmâʿîl I (Safavid ruler, d. 930/1524),
Qâdı Îsâ Sâvajî (d. 896/1491), 62–3 32, 73
Qadi Wajih al-Din Umar al-Suhrawardi Shaykh İbrâhîm (Şirvânşâh ruler, d.
(d. 532/1137), 26 820/1417), 55
Shaykh Uways (Jalayrid ruler, d. 776/1374),
Rıhtım, Mehmet, 37–8, 48n, 82n 38, 48n
Rükneddîn Alâüddevle Simnânî (d. Shaykh Vefâ’ (d. 896/1491), 69–70, 84n,
736/1336), 29–30 154n
Rükneddîn Sincâsî (d. 628/1231), 33, 299 Sinâneddîn Yûsuf b. Yaʿkûb (d. 989/1581),
Rûmî, Mevlânâ Celâlüddîn (d. 672/1273), 19, 23–4, 77–8, 86n, 117, 148n, 166,
33, 71, 126, 134–6, 150n, 152n, 153n, 190n, 279
224, 238, 248, 259 Sofyalı Bâlî Efendi (d. 960/1553), 173–4,
202
Şaʿbân-ı Veli (d. 976/1569), 7–9, 80, 89–91, Şücâʿuddîn Efendi (shaykh of Murad III,
92n, 93–4, 96–9, 101, 104, 108, 118, d. 997/1588), 19, 76–8, 86n, 171, 175,
124, 134, 136, 146–7, 156, 186, 197–8, 185, 188, 190n, 192n, 205, 215, 225,
199–201, 204–5, 209, 211–12, 214, 227, 261n, 279, 289n, 296
220n, 223–6, 230, 237, 250, 258, Süleymân I (Ottoman ruler, d. 974/1566),
282–3, 285, 290n, 294–5, 303 64, 74, 76, 85n, 118, 125–6, 137, 144,
Saʿdeddîn Efendi (Ottoman jurist, d. 148n, 149n, 156, 173–4, 271, 273
1008/1599), 206–8, 219n, 220n, 229, Sultan Yaʿkûb (Akkoyunlu ruler, d.
275, 284 896/1490), 62–3
Saʿdî Çelebi (Ottoman Grand Müfti, d. Sünbül Efendi (d. 936/1529), 70–4, 85n,
946/1539), 125–7, 151n 128, 191n, 218n, 270, 273–6, 278, 284,
Saʿdî-i Şirâzî (d. 691/1292), 44 286n, 288n, 289n
Sadrüddîn-i Hıyavî (d. 860/1456), 53–7,
82n, 301 Tâhirzâde (shaykh of Cemâl el-Halvetî), 66,
Safî al-Dîn Ardabilî (d. 735/1334), 31, 84n
39–40, 66, 300 Taşköpüzâde (d. 969/1561), 125–6, 151n,
Şâh Kubâd Şirvânî (d. 950/1544), 59 272, 288n
Şahâbüddîn-i Tebrizî (d. 702/1302), 33, Temür-e Lang (Timurid ruler, d. 807/1405),
299 22, 29, 40–1, 50–2, 81n, 271, 286n,
Sarî al-Saqatî (d. 253/867), 25 287n

Toktamış (Golden Horde ruler, d. 807/1405), Yaʿkûb el-Germiyânî (d. 979/1571), 19, 23,
40, 271 74, 76–7, 117
Yâycı Hacı Mehmed Dede (brother of
ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzîz (caliph, d. 101/720), ʿÖmer el-Fu’âdî), 110, 234
249 Yûsuf Mahdûm (d. 890/1485), 58
ʿUmar b. al-Khattâb (caliph, d. 23/644), 249 Yûsuf Müskûrî (d. 890/1485), 37, 58
ʿUmar b. Muhammad al-Suhrawardî, Shihâb
al-Dîn Abû Hafs (d. 632/1234), 27, 44, Zâhirüddîn Halvetî (d. 800/1398), 29–30,
45n, 221n 301
Uzun Hasan (Akkoyunlu ruler, d. 882/1478), Zayn al-Dîn al-Khâfî (d. 838/1435),
49n, 62, 67, 83n, 84n 54
Zenbilli ʿAlî Efendi (d. 931/1525), 65, 271,
Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî (d. 869/1465), 18, 19n, 37, 273, 274, 275, 276, 284
43, 55–66, 71, 74, 82n, 89, 94–7, 217, Zilfi, Madeline C., 4, 17, 79, 82n, 219n,
222n, 250, 279, 293–4, 301 268

INDEX OF PLACES
Africa, 3, 6–7, 63 Central Asia, 2, 31, 50, 219n, 272, 274,

Aleppo, 136, 274, 299 286n, 288n
Amasya, 43, 52, 54, 68, 101, 168–9, 301–2
Anatolia (Asia Minor), 2, 7, 18, 22, 29, Damascus, 51, 74, 181, 299–300
41–4, 48n, 50–3, 60–2, 65–7, 69, 73–4,
79, 89, 93, 97, 101, 103–4, 110, 121, Edirne, 61, 83n, 275, 279, 288n
144–5, 172–3, 181, 184–6, 188, 193n, Egypt, 1, 17, 38, 42, 51, 53, 57, 59, 63–5,
204, 214, 216–17, 221n, 230, 238, 74, 76, 126, 136, 145, 245, 272, 274,
264n, 272, 283, 288n, 293 279, 299–301
Ankara, 52, 161, 301 Erzincan, 66–7, 301–2
Atâbey Gazi Mosque, 96, 105n, 111, 137, Europe/Europeans, 7, 79, 164, 235, 283,
154n 290n, 293, 297
Aydın, 60–1, 301
Azerbaijan, 2, 17, 37, 40, 44, 52–3, 55, Gazergâh, 35, 41, 300–1
59–60, 76, 293, 299 Gilan, 34–5, 48n, 81n, 300
Baghdad, 18, 26–7, 41, 62, 192n, 263n, Herat, 29–30, 34–7, 40–2, 47n, 48n, 81n,
299–301 300–1
Baku, 55–7, 61–2, 66, 94, 301 Hisârardı, 137, 164, 179, 190n, 200
Balkans, 2, 10n, 17, 50, 80, 191, 296 Honsâlâr Mosque, 114–16, 119, 129, 137,
Bolu, 99–101, 106n, 108, 110–11, 182–3, 148n, 154n, 168, 179–80
193n
Bursa, 29, 60–1, 75, 106n, 136, 272, 274, İlgâz Mountain, 112–13, 127, 141, 182, 202
279 India/Indian subcontinent, 6, 11n, 25, 31, 33,
Byzantine Empire/Byzantium, 2, 93–4, 52, 81n, 272, 286n, 300
105n, 154n, 268, 274, 285n İskilip, 171–2, 174, 176, 201–2, 263n
İstanbul (Constantinople), 4, 45n, 50, 57,
Çağa, 110, 182 59, 61, 64–5, 67, 69, 72, 74, 76–7,
Cairo, 51, 64–5, 72, 77, 145, 245 81n, 85n, 86n, 93, 98–101, 103, 117,
326

Index of Places 327
124–7, 133, 149n, 151n, 153n, 154n, Ottoman(s)/Ottoman Empire, 1–2, 4, 6–8,
159–60, 171–2, 177, 188, 189n, 192n, 17–19, 22–4, 28–32, 33, 35, 39, 41–4,
197, 202, 219n, 220n, 234, 236, 259, 50–2, 57–74, 76–80, 91, 93–4, 97,
263n, 279–82, 287n, 289n, 290n, 293n, 101, 104, 108, 117–18, 120–6, 132–3,
296, 302 144, 147, 156, 159–61, 165, 171–2,
İznik, 42, 266n, 300 185–8, 198, 201, 203–6, 208, 210,
212, 214–15, 217–18, 223, 230–2,
Karaman, 61–2, 66, 69–70, 301–2 236–8, 243, 245–51, 255–6, 259–60,
Kars, 42, 300 268–75, 277, 279, 282–5, 292–8,
Kastamonu, 7, 9, 45n, 80, 89, 91, 92n, 93–4, 302
96–9, 104, 105n, 108–12, 114, 117–22,
124–5, 127–8, 131, 133–8, 143–7, Persia/Iran, 2, 17, 31, 40, 50–1, 71, 76, 79,
148n, 150n, 151n, 152n, 153, 154n, 81n, 127, 145, 172–3, 219n, 224, 233,
156, 158–60, 163–71, 173, 175–6, 235, 256, 274
179, 181–4, 187, 189n, 195, 199–204,
208–9, 217–18, 223–4, 231–5, 250, Şamâhî, 37, 55–9, 300–1
269, 282, 285, 290n, 294–6, 302 Samarqand, 29, 299
Khwârizm, 34, 271–2 Sinop, 42, 127, 301
Kırşehir, 41–2, 48n, 301 Şirvân (Şirvânvâhs), 29, 38, 41, 52, 54–9,
Konya, 136, 299–300 61, 81n, 300–1
Küre-i Hadîd, 176, 179, 181, 192n Syria, 63, 65
Küre-i Nühâs, 124, 150n, 232
Tabriz, 27, 37–8, 41, 48n, 53, 62, 235, 274,
Lahîcân, 35, 37, 300–1 299–302
Taşköprü, 98
Mecca/Medina, 24, 51, 77, 81n, 135, 144, Tokat, 59, 66, 101, 135, 139, 158, 165, 167,
146, 162, 189n5, 193n, 229, 252, 266n 300
Transoxiana, 49n, 50, 155n, 271, 274,
Niğde, 42, 52, 300–1 301

INDEX OF SUBJECTS
ʿAbbâsid caliphate, 27–8, 44 fetvâ (legal opinion), 208, 261n, 271, 273–7,
Akkoyunlu sultanate, 49n, 51, 53, 55, 58–9, 286n, 289n
62–5, 67–8, 81n, 82n, 83n, 274
Aksarâyî family, 65–7 Gülşeniye order, 57, 59–60, 63–5, 72, 76–8,
Arabic language, 2, 8, 15–16, 23, 37, 45n, 83n, 86n, 279, 289n, 294
71, 89, 92n, 122, 132, 149n, 152n, 172,
176, 178, 191n, 192n, 193n, 193n, halife (successor or deputy), 7, 9, 15, 22,
200, 210, 217, 218n, 231, 237–8, 241, 33–4, 38–40, 44, 53–4, 56–64, 66, 68,
249–50, 253, 256–7, 259, 262n, 266n, 70–2, 74, 78, 82n, 83n, 86n, 90–1,
270–1, 275, 283, 286n 91n, 92n, 96–7, 99, 101–3, 105n, 108,
atvâr-ı sabʿa, 238, 240, 242, 264n 111–12, 116–21, 124–5, 128, 130, 135,
139–40, 145, 149n, 150n, 151n, 154n,
Bayrâmiye order, 74, 111, 125, 127, 161, 156–8, 161, 165–72, 174, 176, 179,
171, 189n, 250, 263n, 294 181–8, 188n, 190n, 191n, 197–8, 199,
201–5, 209–11, 218n, 219n, 222n,
Celâlî revolts, 79, 185, 204, 208, 214, 219n, 225, 236–7, 243, 254, 263n, 269,
220n, 221n, 224, 290n 278–9, 282–3, 285, 289n, 290n,
Cemâliye order, 60, 65, 67, 72–4, 85n 293–6
Christian/Christianity, 5, 70, 164, 184, Halvetiye order, 1–2, 4, 7–9, 10n, 12n, 15,
256–7, 261n, 290n, 293, 297 17–19, 21–44, 45n, 46n, 47n, 48n, 49n,
50–63, 65–80, 81n, 82n, 83n, 84n, 85n,
debts/lending, 143–4, 184–5 86n, 89, 91, 92n, 93–4, 96, 98–101,
devrân, 8, 31, 53, 126, 131, 152n, 260, 103–4, 105n, 106n, 107n, 108, 110–11,
268–9, 273–6, 278, 286n, 289n, 113, 116–18, 120, 122, 124–39, 142,
296 144–7, 149n, 151n, 153n, 154n, 157,
159, 165, 167, 170–3, 177–80, 182–3,
erbaʿîn (forty-day retreat), 8, 37, 53, 60, 66, 185–7, 189n, 191n, 192n, 193n, 197–8,
68, 110, 113, 165, 168, 190n, 204, 200, 202–5, 208, 210, 213, 217, 219n,
219n 222n, 224, 229, 231, 234, 236–40, 243,
328

Index of Subjects 329
245–60, 264n, 268–74, 278–80, 282, mufti/müftülük, 96, 126, 150n, 151n, 161,
284–5, 286n, 289n, 292–8, 299–302 201, 203–4, 209, 214–15, 219n, 220n,
Hanbalî school, 189n, 207, 220n, 231, 261n, 287n
288n
Hanafî school, 53, 146, 189n, 229, 232, 254, Nakşbendi order, 6–7, 29–31, 127, 152n,
271–4, 286n 219n, 239, 263n
headgear (tâc, qalansuwa), 37, 176–9, 193n, Nafahât al-Uns, 27, 29, 33–4, 44
250 nefs (carnal soul/passions), 8, 96, 115,
123–4, 129–30, 133, 165–6, 172–3,
jinn, 106n, 139–40, 164, 200 239, 244, 246, 249, 251–2, 264n, 270
Kâdızâdelis/Kâdızâdeli–Halveti conflict, Persian ethnicity/language, 16, 39, 71, 76,

17, 59, 78–9, 82n, 86n, 149n, 198, 206, 81n, 106n, 127, 152n, 172, 200, 219n,
219n, 220n, 229–30, 232, 241–2, 246, 224, 256, 264n, 283
250, 254, 262n, 264n, 269–70, 272–3, pilgrimage/hajj, 26, 38, 46n, 51–2, 58, 63,
275–7, 280, 282, 284, 285n, 287n, 71–2, 81n, 83n, 86n, 106n, 135–6,
290n, 297 144–6, 158, 171, 181, 230, 236, 274,
Karakoyunlu, 53, 55, 83n 278, 294, 299–301
Karamanids, 61–2, 66, 69–70, 84n preacher (vâʿiz), 25, 61, 77, 116, 149, 159,
kerâmet (acts of grace/miracles), 68, 111, 201, 203, 249–50, 262n, 274
130, 138–41, 157, 160, 163–4, 169,
176, 182–4, 202–3, 206, 209–16, 228 al-Qurʾân, 2, 8, 15, 24, 114, 116, 125, 130,
kisve (dervish cap), 48n, 57, 135, 142, 140, 148n, 150n, 152n, 154n, 155n,
177–8, 248 174, 178–9, 191n, 207–8, 229–30, 241,
Kitâb adab al-murîdîn, 26 251, 257, 272, 277, 281
Kutb (Pole), 97, 121, 123, 128, 138, 142,
144, 146, 149n, 152n, 162, 228 relics, 163–4
Rightly-Guided Caliphs, 178–9, 254–6
lâyiha (advisory note), 90, 169, 180, 185, Risâlat al-tahqîqiyya, 85n, 273–5, 278,
188, 190n, 215, 236 288n, 289n
Risâlat al-tawthîqiyya wa risâlat
Makâle-i ferdiye ve risâle-i virdiye, 250–8, al-tawhîdiyya, 218n, 237–40
266n, 269 Risâle-i muslihu’n-nefs, 239–50
Mamluks, 38, 48n, 51–2, 63–5, 72, 83n, Risâle-i Türbenâme, 92n, 148n, 198, 206,
208, 274 220n, 231, 233, 236, 262n
medrese, 60, 96, 105n, 126, 150n, 153n, Risâletü’l-müsellesât, 236–7
200
Menâkıb-i İbrâhîm-i Gülşeni, 62–4, 134 Şaʿbâniye order, 7, 18, 39, 51, 60, 72,
Menâkıb-i Şaʿbân-ı Veli, 89, 91, 92n, 96, 99, 76–7, 80, 89, 92n, 103, 114, 117–22,
109, 121, 134, 140, 188, 197–8, 198n, 125, 128, 131, 134–7, 144, 147, 153n,
200, 206, 209, 218, 223, 254, 295 156, 158–9, 171, 175–7, 182, 184–6,
menzil/menzilhâne, 100, 106n, 112, 125, 188, 190n, 193n, 197–206, 208, 210,
202 215, 217–18, 223–4, 227, 230–1, 234,
Mevleviye order, 33, 62, 134–6, 153n, 224 236–7, 240, 242, 245, 247, 250–1,
Mongols, 2, 7, 18, 22, 27–30, 32, 35, 40, 42, 258–60, 263n, 264n, 265n, 267n, 269,
44, 46n, 47n, 51, 216, 259, 261n, 264n, 278–9, 282–3, 285, 289n, 290n, 292,
292–3, 302 294, 296

Safavids, 31–2, 39–40, 44, 45n, 51, 57–9, tarikat, 103, 128, 130, 134, 150n, 153n, 179,
63, 66, 72–3, 76, 79, 81n, 84n, 100, 245–6, 256
118, 145, 147, 172, 177, 192n, 204, tayy-ı zamân ve mekân (transcending of time
224, 235, 256, 273–4, 288n, 293 and space), 42, 48n, 68, 146
Satan, 115, 129–30, 135, 206, 213, 245, telkîn, 23–4, 28
249 Tezkîretü’l-Evliyâ, 127, 160–1, 189n
seccâde (prayer rug), 97, 118–19, 121, 149n, Tezkîretü’l-Halvetiye, 23, 77, 279
157, 168, 171, 180–1, 200, 205, 224–5, Timurids, 18, 22, 29–30, 40–4, 50–2, 55, 64,
230, 240 272, 293, 302
Seljuk/Selçuk, 2, 57, 93–4, 104n, 105n, tobacco, 78, 280, 290n
261n, 264n Turkish ethnicity/language, 2, 10n, 18, 45n,
semâʿ, 8, 31, 40, 53, 126, 260, 268–9, 50, 71, 85n, 92n, 105n, 151n, 152n,
273–6, 286n, 289n 154n, 176, 183, 192n, 193n, 207, 210,
şeriʿat (shariʿa), 6, 103, 123, 128–9, 134, 218, 219n, 237, 240, 243, 250, 259,
153n, 179, 245–6, 253, 256–7 262n, 263n, 264n, 267n, 282, 286n,
şeyhülislâm, 61, 65, 171, 174, 191n, 206–7, 296, 298
219n, 220n, 229, 238, 271, 274–5
Shâfiʿî school, 231–2, 262n, 276, 288n ʿulama’/ʿulema, 3, 60, 69, 151n, 183, 207
Shiʿa/Shiʿism/Shiʿite, 25, 32, 40, 45n, 51,
58, 85n, 192n, 221n, 256 vakıf/evkâf (pious foundations), 10n, 36, 70,
silsile, 9, 18, 21–37, 40, 42–4, 45n, 46n, 84n, 126, 171, 174, 190n, 192n, 205,
48n, 52, 55–6, 58–60, 68, 83n, 86n, 219n, 225, 227, 264n
89, 97, 99, 105n, 121, 131, 149n, 151n, vefk-talismans, 69, 140, 154n
191n, 193n, 217, 218n, 222n, 242, 249, Vird-i settâr (Halveti litany), 8, 57, 100,
279, 282, 290n, 292, 294, 299–304 250, 252–6, 258, 265n, 266n
Sivâsiye order, 58–9, 76, 82n, 269, 279,
285n, 289n women, 16, 31, 34, 42, 52, 55, 62, 67, 70,
Suhrawardiyya order, 18, 24, 26–9, 32–3, 72, 74–5, 84n, 98, 105n, 140–2, 155n,
40–1, 43–4, 45n12, 292 187, 192n, 199, 235, 240
Sünbüliye order, 57, 59–60, 65, 74, 76–7,
105n, 106n, 117, 136, 149n, 166, 172, Zeyniye order, 54, 66, 69–70, 81n, 178,
273, 279, 289n, 294 193n, 234,
Sunni/Sunnism, 10n, 25, 51, 84n, 172, zikr (dhikr), 24, 31, 34, 47n, 57, 99–100,
192n, 206, 209, 211, 238, 241, 261n, 136, 153n, 175, 205, 234, 243, 247,
293 250, 256–8, 271, 273, 276, 278, 286n


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The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought in the Ottoman Empire

extended throughout the Empire at the height of its expansion.

With careful reconstruction of the lives of formerly obscure

John J. Curry is an Assistant Professor of Near Eastern and

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Edinburgh University Press

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Edinburgh University Press Ltd

ISBN 978 0 7486 3923 6 (hardback)

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List of Maps and Figures vii

INTRODUCTION: ON THE STUDY OF OTTOMAN MYSTICAL

PART I. THE RISE AND SPREAD OF THE HALVETİ ORDER

PART II. THE EVOLUTION OF A HALVETİ SUB-BRANCH: THE

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PART III. DEFENDING THE CULT OF SAINTS IN ELEVENTH/

CONCLUSION: WHAT CAN THE ŞAʿBÂNİYE TEACH US

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MAP 1 THE MIDDLE EAST xvii

FIGURE 1 INTERIOR OF THE ŞAʿBÂN-I VELİ MOSQUE IN

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AG-MM Gölpınarlı, Abdülbâkî, Mevlanaʾdan Sonra Mevlevilik, 2nd edn

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While accepting a fundamental contradiction between scholarly Islam (as

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[T]he delegitimization of Sufism in the Middle East was accelerated by modern

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Figure 1 Interior of the Şaʿbân-ı Veli mosque in Kastamonu, Turkey

presence. Following the ceremony, a period of rest, followed by a modest meal

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. . . hagiographical narratives . . . deserve to be liberated from the tyranny of blind

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Early Sufism and The Origins of the