Author Description
Ottoman Puritanism And Its Discontents: Aḥmad Al-Āqḥiṣarī And The Qaḍīzādelis Considers The Emergence Of A New Activist Sufism In The Muslim World From The Sixteenth Century Onwards, Which Emphasized Personal Responsibility For Putting God's Guidance Into Practice. Mustapha Sheikh Focuses Specifically On Developments At The Centre Of The Ottoman Empire, But Also Considers Both How They Might Have Been Influenced By The Wider Connections And Engagements Of Learned And Holy Men And How Their Influence Might Have Been Spread From The Ottoman Empire To South Asia In Particular. The Immediate Focus Is On The Qāḍīzādeli Movement Which Flourished In Istanbul From The 1620s To The 1680s And Which Inveighed Against Corrupt Scholars And Heterodox Sufis. Up To Now This Movement Has Been Seen As Proto-wahhābī, Proto-fundamentalist Or Otherwise Retrograde. By Studying The Relationship Between Aḥmad Al-rūmī Al-Āqḥiṣārī's Magisterial Majālis Al-abrār And Qāḍīzādeli Beliefs, Sheikh Places Both Author And The Movement In An Ottoman, Ḥanafī, And Sufi Milieu. Moreover, The Study Suggests That The Impact Of The Majālis Al-abrār On The Qāḍīzādelis Had The Outcome In The Second Half Of The Seventeenth Century Of Increasing The Violence Of Their Activists, A Development Which Ultimately Led To Their Downfall.
Menrva's Summary
THE THESIS
This study investigates the theological and social origins of the Qāḍīzādeli movement to determine how their activist interpretation of Sufism influenced seventeenth-century Ottoman religious life. Mustapha Sheikh, a scholar of Islamic intellectual history, utilizes the writings of Aḥmad al-Rūmī al-Āqḥiṣārī to re-evaluate the Qāḍīzādeli movement. By situating these figures within a specific Ḥanafī and Sufi context, the author challenges the common historiographical tendency to label the movement as merely proto-fundamentalist or retrograde. The work argues that the movement's radicalization was a direct consequence of specific intellectual engagements that ultimately precipitated its political collapse.
THE SCOPE MAP
What You Will Find
- An analysis of the Majālis al-abrār by Aḥmad al-Rūmī al-Āqḥiṣārī.
- A detailed examination of the Qāḍīzādeli movement in Istanbul from the 1620s to the 1680s.
- Exploration of the intellectual connections between the Ottoman Empire and South Asia.
- A framework for understanding the intersection of activist Sufism and personal religious responsibility.
Scope Limits
- The study does not provide a comprehensive history of all Ottoman religious movements of the era.
- The analysis is primarily focused on the intellectual and theological output of specific figures rather than a broad socio-economic survey of the period.
THE AUTHORITY PERSPECTIVE
Scholars in the field of Ottoman studies recognize this work as a significant corrective to previous, reductive interpretations of the Qāḍīzādeli movement. Readers frequently note the academic density of the prose and the author's meticulous attention to primary source texts.
Page Count:
256
Publication Date:
2016-01-01
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
0192508091
ISBN-13:
9780192508096
History
Ottoman Empire
Middle Eastern
Islamic Studies
Religious History
Sufism