Ottoman History Podcast - The Mystical Turn in Ottoman Political Thought

Episode Date: January 12, 2020

Episode 444 with Hüseyin Yılmaz hosted by Nir Shafir and Alp Eren Topal Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud In medieval Anatolia, political authority could be found in surprising places. In this podcast, we speak to Hüseyin Yılmaz about the political role of Sufi leaders in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. We explore how these shaykhs could become powerful political leaders in their own right and how the nascent Ottoman state dealt with their power, ultimately participating in what Yılmaz calls "the mystical turn" in Ottoman political thought. « Click for More »

The notion of the caliphate was mystified and converged with other Sufistic ideals. The Ottomans from the very beginning're keen on adopting Sufi imageries. Welcome to the Ottoman History Podcast. I'm Nir Shafir. And I'm Alper Antopal. And today we are here with Hüseyin Yilmaz. He is an Associate Professor of history and art history at George Mason University, as well as director of the Ali Vural Akh Center for Global Islamic Studies. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much for inviting me to this interview, Nir and Alp. Today's topic is political thought in the Ottoman Empire, and actually even before the Ottoman Empire, really in the post-Abbasid Middle East. Hussein has recently written a book on this topic. It's

called Caliphate Redefined, The Mystical Turn in Ottoman Political Thought. It came out in 2018 with Princeton University Press. And it's a sort of significant book because we really haven't had, not just on the podcast, but also in the field of Middle Eastern history, a lot of work on political thought in this period. For instance, if we were to think about European political thought, maybe some quick names would come up, Machiavelli, Hobbes, these sorts of things. But it's very, quite hard to find the narrative of Ottoman political thought in any way. And so we're very happy to have you on the show. Let me start with this basic question. When you think about political thought in the Ottoman Empire, what do we mean? Why is it that there

hasn't been such a large amount of writing on this topic? The reason why we do not speak about political thought in the context of Ottoman history is that it was mostly overshadowed by broader categories. One is imperial ideology. So political thought has been studied, was often in reference to this so-called imperial ideology. It's definitely part of political thought, but political thought cannot be reduced to imperial ideology. It's definitely part of political thought, but political thought cannot be reduced to imperial ideology.

Secondly, not only political thought, but almost the entire Ottoman thought or intellectual history has been long considered as a sort of un-innovative continuation of Islamic thought and intellectual history, which doesn't require much attention because we see all these well-established concepts and ideas in the Ottoman case. So they must refer the same ideas and concepts at the time when they were first conceptualized.

So these approaches just prevented historians from seriously engaging with Ottoman political thought. So here you're referring to this notion that in this post-classical Islamic period, there just wasn't anything new no new innovations that everything all thought was derivative in a sense yes that was the idea long had long sway in Ottoman historiography as we all know of course in in the past decades it was seriously questioned from all angles. But perhaps to better situate what I will say, is I have to say a few words about my general observation about authority in the broader Islamic tradition,

which I see in almost every text somehow mentioned or referred to or alluded, even if it's not specifically dealt with and that is the question of the nature of political authority nature of authority after the prophet by the 11th century we see that there is general understanding that the prophet had three natures uh the prophetic nature as nubuwa and saintly nature as wilaya and the political leadership political nature as sultan so he represented three authorities three natures and different sections segments of muslim society claimed to be inheritors of that. So the Abbasid Caliphs, for example, only claimed, actually claimed more, but identified with the sultana of the prophet.

The ulema conventionally considered themselves that they were inheritors of prophet's nubuwa, speaking for the religion. And saints, especially from 10th century onwards, or those Sufis, claimed that they represent the wilaya of the Prophet. Now, the question is, which nature is superior, and whether it is possible to combine those natures. It was, again, almost universally agreed that except for not across all sects but for Sunnis for example the first four caliphs combined all these three natures,

afterwards these were fragmented. So the idea was the proper authority was fragmented The proper authority was fragmented from very early on, and there is a noble pursuit to recombine it, to reunite it. Now, the opportunity, I would say, the best opportunity or the best context came with the fall of the Abbasids or towards the fall of Abbasids. From 10th century onwards, the caliphate in the sense of executive power is pretty much a formality. Towards the end of the Abbasids, especially with the fall of them, with the Mongol of as a barren place for learning or culture, but in the sense for the experimentation of new ideals. So I would argue that the most exciting place in the Islamic world at the time in terms of the interesting figures

from scientists mathematicians to poets from jurists to Sufis was Asia Minor very very interesting people came to that person perhaps for the reasons that they could not articulate themselves fully in well established

learning centers of learning. Now, there, different political ideals are put to work. So those dervishes, for example, the most notable, the Rumis and the Abdalan, the most notable Hacı Bek bektash considered themselves as independent they they emerged as uh rulers who claim to have combined united all these three natures uh of the prophet they did not consider themselves living under the rulership of or under the authority of some ruler they considered themselves as such. How do we know?

With the titles they used. They used royal titles before the Ottoman rulers. Rumi, for example, named all his grandsons as emirs. And Muhsin Pasha, actually Baba Ilyas, his father, named all his sons as pashas. Mevlana Rumi was known as Hudawendigar. And Haji Bektash was known as Hunkar. These are royal titles. So these are the sovereign, the king.

These are not honorary titles. Through their engagements with worldly rulers, we see that they considered themselves above these worldly rulers and only considered them as their executive arms to manage worldly affairs, whereas they themselves considered them above all others. And here the term caliphate served them well. The notion of the caliphate was here mystified and converged with other Sufistic ideals, such as Qutb and Gaus, whom the axis mundi, or the pillar of the world, and sainthood became the main denominator of this name idea of the caliphate.

So it is not just a political rulership, but it is a status accorded in the spiritual realm directly. So one needs to be worthy of it. And by virtue of it, you can combine the executive and epistemological, which is Nabuva, authorities. So sainthood became considered by those as higher than the other natures of the prophet. So I mean this is quite interesting because what you're saying is that you have these 13th century holy men, saints, Haji Bektash whose tomb is outside of Nevshehir and Jalal ad-Din Rumi whose tomb is now in Konya are all of a sudden claiming themselves with these new concepts,

or calling themselves caliph, and using these terms to project some sort of political authority upon the Anatolian Peninsula. Yes. But as I said, if we try to understand their notion of the caliphate in reference to the Abbasids, or juristic notions of it, it doesn't make sense. Because Mevlana Rumi or Haji Bektash never attempted to within an order, regardless of political entities around. Of course, in practice, it proceeded through negotiation, and at times through

skirmishes or opposition to it. Baba Ilyas had such a vision, and he rebelled against the Seljuk rule. Bedrettin had such a vision and rebelled against the Ottomans. Abdalan, sometimes they rebelled, but mostly they engaged with the Ottomans because in their justification or understanding, it was the Abdalan Sheikh who had who was the real wielder of authority whereas Ottoman ruler was

just his executive arm I mean we have fantastic encounters in hagiographies between those Sheikhs and rulers in which a sheikh accords the worthy rulership of a given area to somebody. In one case Aydinul Umur Bey was considered as Sultan, the Sultan of Ghazis by Arif Çelebi, Mevlana's grandson. Okay, I just wanted to know maybe the diffuse and fragmented nature of the political authority in Anatolia allowed these people to somehow experiment with new utopian political and social communities in a sense, right? Asia Minor and then the Balkans is a place where there is no strong political leadership.

In that context, those Sufi brotherhoods were at least as powerful as those principalities, which we know, be it Aydinoglu or Germiyanoglu. Remember, most princes started to call themselves as Celebes. It's interesting because Celebes is a Mevlevi innovation. It comes from them. So the ones who got affiliated with the Mevlevi order got that title. And then some received the titles Pashas. received the titles pashas.

The first Ottoman pasha is Süleyman Pasha, almost 100 years later than it was first used by the Abdalan. So it's not just utopian. The Bektashis, or the broader Abdalan constituency, or the Mevlevids, are very well organized. They have networks. They have lodges. Ulu Arif Celebi, actually the grandson of Rumi, travels

almost entire Asia Minor and Caucasia, converting leaders to his cause, establishing their lodges. The devotees of these Sufi orders have or display a lot more stronger affiliation than their

affiliations to political leaders. So just an example, a person living under the Ottomans may not have felt that they were living under the so-called Ottomans, which were not known as Ottomans in then. But they would be known as a Mevlevi or if they were, if they did Abdalan group with that group. So those affiliations were a lot more stronger, the Sufi affiliations. And they're mostly autonomous. They are self-sustaining. They don't need worldly rulers. So that's why worldly rulers had to negotiate with them more than those Sufi groups had to negotiate with those worldly rulers. I mean, this is a fascinating picture of

the power of these Sufi orders and of Sufism in general in the cultural world of medieval Anatolia. How does this then transfer over, if we're going to jump to the Ottomans now, how does this transfer over to, let's say, Ottoman political thought? Because obviously the Ottomans over the course of the 14th and 15th century are slowly taking over and consolidating their rule across Anatolia, do they then take up these very same ideas in their notion of rulership? One reason the Ottomans succeeded in relation to other principalities at the frontier was that their ability to refashion themselves in the sophistic imageries.

So just remember Osman Gazi's marriage with Malhatun. It is also, I mean, Bitlisi is a genius of late 15th century, recasts that story in symbolic terms, in terms of uniting the spiritual world with the material world, because Malhotra is the daughter of a sheikh, right? And then the entire dream represents that Sufi imageries. And it's also quite messianic, which got later elaboration. So the Ottomans from the very beginning were keen on adopting Sufi imageries, apart from sovereign titles. Their sovereign title was Beg. So Beg means you have independent rule in a given place.

But they adopted a host of other titles, which makes only sense from a Sufistic perspective. So they continuously appealed to that, showing that they are also spiritually worthy for the rulership. And also, there was a working relationship between the Ottomans and Sufi groups. a working relationship between the Ottomans and Sufi groups. The tacit understanding was that, from a Sufi perspective, the real leader as caliph of our entire creation was of course the Sufi Sheikh, and the Ottoman ruler was the temporal ruler obedient to the Sheikhikh but that's only tacit it doesn't have any ceremonial or real application

on the other hand the Ottomans also purposefully propagated that imagery in the way that they are fully endowed with the spiritual qualifications to be the real caliph over the creation,

proved by the fact that those Sufi leaders are under his authority. So one of the interesting themes that you bring up in your book is that with the rise of these Sufis, you have a new sort of moral paradigm of rulership, that it's not about the institution of the caliphate per se, but it's about the moral qualities of the individual who has become the ruler. What does it actually mean that you need to transform the morality of the ruler?

The caliphate increasingly, not initially, increasingly start to serve as a moral paradigm. not initially, increasingly start to serve as a moral paradigm. And that is to reform the ruler, to become the ideal ruler, which is prescribed by the Sufis or by the scriptures, basically, or by any strains of political thought. Because the unknown political thought, we at times call it Islamic political thought or continuation of it was a lot more complex.

In it we have Persian and Greek ideals as well as the very Ottoman experience itself. So caliphate became a notion firmly grounded in the Quran but defined increasingly reflecting different ideals of these cultural strains. Because caliphate still is the most convenient term. And we see that in this process, it was almost exclusively defined in reference to Quranic verses, not the historical caliphate. So what does that mean? It means that caliphate,

first conceptualized as the deputy of, or the successor to the prophet. And jurists came up with an elaborate set of qualifications to become the successor of the prophet. That doesn't fit to the Ottoman profile because one of the basic tenets was

that once belonging to the Qurayshi tribe, the Ottomans obviously did not. Others, well, not quite because it has to be fully just, knowledgeable, etc. I mean, those could be twisted, but still problematic. However, the Quranic notion of the caliphate as God's deputy on earth, also elaborated from both advocates of the empire, the Ottoman dynasty, or Sufis outside. The one who reflects God's attributes in his life and management. And most important among those is mercy. And that is a very Ibn Arabian conception, in the sense that most Sufis, including Ibn Arabi, by the 13th, 14th centuries, thought of mercy as the dominant attribute of God. So a good rulership, a proper caliphate, should act as the deputy of God's mercy. So that's a moral paradigm.

So how do you show that you're merciful? Yeah, but that's a different paradigm. So how do you show that you're merciful? Yeah, but that's a different question. No, the thing here is God has so many attributes, like Jalal for example. God could be angry. God could be a revenger, right?

Those attributes were not highlighted at all. So including, of course, perhaps a bit paradoxically, Selim I was identified as Khalifa Rahmani, so the caliph of God's attribute of mercy. But that's how they are envisioned. It doesn't have any sort of application beyond the ideal realm.

It's just that way. If you want to be a true caliph, that's how you can be a true caliph. Of course, by virtue of their executive power, they can justify themselves as such and exact and act exactly uh in opposite direction so there is there is there is no mechanism uh to check that i think there's still a presumption that these values and ideals by circulating within a society create an image of an ideal ruler and how an ideal ruler should act and what qualities they should possess and how you should transform the ruler into that person there is no check uh in the sense that there is no institutional uh mechanism uh to evaluate uh and take the sultan or the caliph uh into question uh whether you act

properly or not but i think uh that very notion created a significant social and cultural check on the way the sultans envisioned themselves and acted in relation to that because we have so many Sufi rebellions in the Ottoman Empire from 15th century onwards. In almost all cases, the basic argument is that the claimant, the rebel, sees himself a better manifestation of God's, or the real manifestation of God's mercy or other attributes with moral impact.

And the criticism is that the ruling sultan or the caliph does not qualify because he doesn't reflect. He's not endowed with those qualities. So there is a pressure. And given that the Ottoman society had become increasingly shaped by Sufi orders, both in urban space and rural space, that means the real wielder of political power, the Sultan, the Caliph, at the helm,

is under that pressure. He has to act in accordance. I think this is a good example because so often when you tell me that the ideal wielder needs to be merciful, we don't think of this as, I don't know, a true political value or something. Sufi sheikhs or other political competitors that are using this language to make these political claims to have the legitimacy to rule, the argument becomes much clearer, I think. Yes. Also, to use again a modern term, why the democratized the very idea of the caliphate? Why they democratized the very idea of the caliphate? Because now whoever thinks that one has the proper qualifications or worthiness for caliphate could claim so. In fact, we have so many no-name Sufis who claim the position because it is a position accorded in the spiritual space.

So that basically pressurizes the rulers to at least propagate the image that they are acting in accordance. But this is, to perhaps prevent a misunderstanding, this is only about the caliphate. to perhaps prevent a misunderstanding. This is only about the caliphate. The Ottoman rule itself has a host of other issues, checks, and areas of legitimacy, including its own experience, the kanun, etc. So they also have a variety of other discourses about power and legitimacy that they're integrating in. Yeah, maybe just to put

things into a broader perspective to finalize this talk as well. It's the general notion that Ottoman sultans did not really favor the title of caliphate before 19th century, before issues of

international sovereignty and the appeal to jihad, etc. So how should we understand this? I mean, was simply our notion, the general notion, that caliphate was not significant before 19th century is wrong or is just based on different notions of caliphate in medieval Anatolia and our modern understanding of the caliphate? Yes, as you said, it's quite a different notion of the caliphate that came to be reimagined, reinvented in the 19th century.

By the Ottomans, that juristic notion of the caliphate as a universal leadership of the entire Muslim community, as its executive power collapsed. It was long gone. And there was no real attempt to revive it for so long until the 19th century. And the real challenge at the time was not to reunite the entire Muslim world politically, but to re-legitimize one's rulership in the newly conceived ideal of the caliphate. Because those Sufi leaders already are posing themselves as God's deputies on earth, seeing themselves above political rulers. So any political rulers now, trouble is not go expand and reunite and claim himself in the very local Muslim constituency, increasingly shaped up and dominated by those Sufi dervishes and leaders. So at that, I think the Ottomans succeeded.

I mean, they themselves increasingly accommodated Sufi orders unless they, of course, rebelled. One good example, I hope we are not taking too much of time, is telling the competition between the rulers and the Sufis, also between Sufis and Sufis. The Mawlawis could not enter Ottoman territories for more than a century. So that shows us that the competition is very real. I mean, there is no theological, perhaps, difference between the Mevlevies or the Ottomans, but there is no Mevlevi lodge in Ottoman territories.

The first one is instituted by Murad II, and that is after Bedrettin Rebellion. Bedrettin Rebellion thought Ottomans, the reality of Sufi leadership to counter local Sufi strains and they also more and more integrated themselves with Sufi sheikhs so that they could portray the Ottoman ruler in the way they portray their own sheikhs. So the kind of caliphate that came into circulation in the 19th century, first of all, had no validity in 15th, 16th centuries. imperial caliphate, with very little attention to its philosophical and moral foundations that were developed under the Ottomans. Well, there's so much more that we could discuss, Hussain.

In your book, we haven't even touched upon many of the topics in it, but I will have to recommend that listeners go out, pick up a copy for themselves, and read through it. It's an inspiring work. With that note, let me thank you for coming on the podcast. Well, thank you very much.

Thank you, Alperen, for co-hosting this. And for our listeners that want to know more, please go to our website. There'll be a bibliography. Hopefully, there'll be a few images. Basically, a few other resources and links where you can go and find out more about the topic. And if you want to keep listening to the auto ministry podcast subscribe to us on itunes or

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