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ENCOUNTER AFTER THE CONQUEST: SCHOLARLY GATHERINGS IN 16TH-CENTURY OTTOMAN DAMASCUS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2015

Helen Pfeifer
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Abstract

This article examines the extensive intellectual and social exchange that resulted from the Ottoman imperial incorporation of Arab lands in the 16th century. In the years immediately after the 1516–17 conquest of the Mamluk Sultanate that brought Egypt, Greater Syria, and the Hijaz under Ottoman rule, Turkish-speaking Ottomans from the central lands (Rumis) found that their political power was not matched by religious and cultural prestige. As the case of Damascus shows, scholarly gatherings called majālis (sing. majlis) were key spaces where this initial asymmetry was both acutely felt and gradually overcome. As arenas for discussion among scholars on the move, literary salons facilitated the circulation of books and ideas and the establishment of a shared intellectual tradition. As occasions where stories were told and history was made, they supported the formation of a common past. In informal gatherings and in the biographical dictionaries that described them, Rumis and Arabs came together to forge an empire-wide learned culture as binding as any political or administrative ingredient of the Ottoman imperial glue.

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International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , May 2015 , pp. 219 - 239
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

NOTES

Author's note: I thank Alexander Bevilacqua, Michael Cook, Anthony Grafton, Molly Greene, Christian Saßmannshausen, Sara Nur Yıldız, the anonymous IJMES reviewers, and the IJMES editors for their invaluable feedback on earlier versions of this article. Portions of the article were circulated at the 2013 Mediterranean Research Meeting and at the 2014 workshop, “Manuscript Cultures in the Ottoman Empire.”

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8 For an example of this trope, see Brockelmann, Carl, Geschichte der Arabischen Literatur (Berlin: Emil Ferber, 1902), 267Google Scholar.

9 A small selection of this expansive literature includes Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, “Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia,” Modern Asian Studies 31 (1997): 735–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Greene, Molly, A Shared World: Christians and Muslims in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Davis, Natalie Zemon, Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006)Google Scholar; Norton, Marcy, “Tasting Empire: Chocolate and the European Internalization of Mesoamerican Aesthetics,” American Historical Review 111 (2006): 660–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Rothman, E. Natalie, Brokering Empire: Trans-Imperial Subjects between Venice and Istanbul (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Samer Ali calls the literary salon (referred to as mujālasa in his period) “one of the primary mechanisms for forming Abbasid society and literature,” Dominic Brookshaw argues that “it was largely within the framework of majālis that much of the intellectual, cultural and social life of medieval Muslims took place,” and Maria Subtelny describes the majlis as “the main forum for literary, particularly poetical, expression in the late Tīmūrid period.” Ali, Samer, Arabic Literary Salons in the Islamic Middle Ages (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010)Google Scholar, 13; Brookshaw, Dominic P., “Palaces, Pavilions and Pleasure-Gardens: The Context and Setting of the Medieval Majlis,” Middle Eastern Literatures 6 (2003): 199CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Subtelny, Maria, “Scenes from the Literary Life of Tīmūrid Herāt,” in Logos Islamikos: Studia Islamica in Honorem Georgii Michaelis Wickens (Papers in Mediaeval Studies 6), ed. Savory, Roger and Agius, Dionisius (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1984), 144Google Scholar. See also Lazarus-Yafeh, Hava, Cohen, Mark R., Somekh, Sasson, and Griffith, Sidney H., eds., The Majlis: Interreligious Encounters in Medieval Islam (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999)Google Scholar.

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12 On 16th-century Ottoman salon culture, see Fleischer, Cornell, Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: The Historian Mustafa Ali (1541–1600) (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), 22–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; İpekten, Halûk, Divan Edebiyatında Edebî Muhitler (Istanbul: Millî Eğitim Bakanlığı Yayınları, 1996), 227–37Google Scholar; Andrews, Walter and Kalpaklı, Mehmet, The Age of Beloveds (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005), 144–46Google Scholar; Çeltik, Halil, “Halep’te Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi’nin Şairler Meclisi,” Gazi Türkiyat (2007): 137–47Google Scholar; İnalcık, Halil, Has-bağçede ʿAyş u Tarab: Nedîmler Şâirler Mutribler (Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2011), chap. 4–8Google Scholar; and Ertuğ, Zeynep Tarim, “Entertaining the Sultan: Meclis, Festive Gatherings in the Ottoman Palace,” in Celebration, Entertainment and Theater in the Ottoman World, ed. Faroqhi, Suraiya and Öztürkmen, Arzu (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014)Google Scholar.

13 Female poets only rarely took part in Istanbul mecālis. For an exception, see Latifi, Tezkire-i Latifi (Istanbul: İkdam Matbaası, 1896–97), 321Google ScholarPubMed. Much earlier, al-Ghazzali discouraged scholars from attending the majālis of not only kings but also commoners, suggesting that nonelite groups held them as well. Lazarus-Yafeh, “Preface,” in The Majlis, ed. Lazarus-Yafeh et al., 11.

14 Salons continued to play an important role in Ottoman cultural life in later centuries. Brömer, Rainer, “Scientific Practice, Patronage, Salons, and Enterprise in Eighteenth Century Cairo: Examination of Al-Gabartī's History of Egypt,” in Multicultural Science in the Ottoman Empire, ed. İhsanoğlu, Ekmeleddin, Chatzis, Kostas, and Nicolaidis, Efthymios (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003)Google Scholar; Hanna, Nelly, “Culture in Ottoman Egypt,” The Cambridge History of Egypt, vol. 2, ed. Daly, M. W. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 98–99Google Scholar; Hanioğlu, M. Şükrü, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008), 94Google Scholar; Sievert, Henning, “Eavesdropping on the Pasha's Salon: Usual and Unusual Readings of an Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Bureaucrat,” Osmanlı Araştırmaları 41 (2013): 159–95Google Scholar.

15 This was true in the medieval period as well. Sarah Stroumsa, “Ibn al-Rāwandī's sūʾ adab al-mujādala: The Role of Bad Manners in Medieval Disputations,” in The Majlis, ed. Lazarus-Yafeh et al., 70; Benjamin Z. Kedar, “The Multilateral Disputation at the Court of the Grand Qan Möngke, 1254,” in The Majlis, ed. Lazarus-Yafeh et al., 162–83.

16 Petry, Carl, The Civilian Elite of Cairo in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981), 61–68Google Scholar; Robinson, Francis, “Ottomans-Safavids-Mughals: Shared Knowledge and Connective Systems,” Journal of Islamic Studies 8 (1997): 151–84, esp. 156Google Scholar; Binbaş, İlker Evrim, “A Damascene Eyewitness to the Battle of Nicopolis: Shams al-Dīn Ibn al-Jazarī (d. 833/1429),” Contact and Conflict in Frankish Greece and the Aegean, 1204–1453, ed. Chrissis, Nikolaos G. and Carr, Mike (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 153–75Google Scholar.

17 Of 115 scholars employed in Ottoman madrasas between the 14th and 16th centuries, about 43 percent had been educated in Iran, 23 percent in Egypt, 15 percent in Anatolia, 9 percent in Transoxiana, 8 percent in Syria, and 2 percent in Iraq. İhsanoğlu, “Institutions,” 372. See also Erünsal, İsmail, Ottoman Libraries: A Survey of the History, Development and Organization of Ottoman Foundation Libraries (Cambridge, Mass.: Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures, Harvard University, 2008), 9–10Google Scholar; Ökten, Ertuğrul, “Scholars and Mobility: A Preliminary Assessment from the Perspective of al-Shaqāyiq al-Nuʿmāniyya,” Osmanlı Araştırmaları 41 (2013): 62Google Scholar; and Yıldız, “From Cairo to Ayasuluk.”

18 al-Ghazzi, Badr al-Din, al-Durr al-Nadid fi Adab al-Mufid wa-l-Mustafid, ed. al-Misri, Abu Yaʿqub Nashʾat (Giza: Maktabat al-Tawʿiyya al-Islamiyya, 2006), 116Google Scholar.

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20 Flemming, Barbara, “Šerīf, Sultan Ġavrī und die ‘Perser,’” Der Islam 45 (1969): 81–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Majalis al-Sultan al-Ghawri: Safahat min Tarikh Misr fi al-Qarn al-ʿAshir al-Hijri, ed. ʿAbd al-Wahhab ʿAzzam (Cairo: Maktabat al-Thaqafa al-Diniyya, 2010). On live performances of hadith commentary in late Mamluk Cairo, see Blecher, Joel, “Ḥadīth Commentary in the Presence of Students, Patrons, and Rivals: Ibn Ḥajar and Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī in Mamluk Cairo,” Oriens 41 (2013): 261–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On preconquest courtly contact between Ottomans and Mamluks, see Muslu, Cihan Yüksel, The Ottomans and the Mamluks: Imperial Diplomacy and Warfare in the Islamic World (London: I. B. Tauris, 2014)Google Scholar.

21 Hacı Paşa met with scholars in Damascus on his way to Cairo, and the Rumi poet Behişti attended gatherings of ʿAli Shir Navaʾi in the Persian lands. Yıldız, “From Cairo to Ayasuluk,” 265; Çavuşoğlu, Mehmet, “Kanunî Devrinin Sonuna Kadar Anadolu’da Nevâyi Tesiri Üzerine Notlar,” Gazi Türkiyat 8 (2011): 24Google Scholar.

22 Istanbul became a destination for the ambitious during the reign of Bayezid II, although unrest in the Timurid lands had already sent many Persian scholars westwards earlier in the 15th century. Sohrweide, Hanna, “Dichter und Gelehrte aus dem Osten im osmanischen Reich (1453–1600): Ein Beitrag zur türkisch-persischen Kulturgeschichte,” Der Islam 46 (1970): 263–302CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sooyong Kim, Minding the Shop: Zati and the Making of Ottoman Poetry in the First Half of the Sixteenth Century (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2005), 64–65.

23 Only two works in the 16th-century Ottoman madrasa curriculum discussed below were written by authors working under Ottoman rule. Ahmed, Shahab and Filipovic, Nenad, “The Sultan's Syllabus: A Curriculum for the Ottoman Imperial medreses Prescribed in a fermān of Qānūnī I Süleymān, Dated 973 (1565),” Studia Islamica 98/99 (2004): 216Google Scholar. See also Uzunçarşılı, İsmail Hakkı, Anadolu Beylikleri ve Akkoyunlu, Karakoyunlu Devletleri (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1969), 209–23Google Scholar; and İhsanoğlu, “Ottoman Educational and Scholarly-Scientific Institutions,” 372.

24 According to Carl Petry, only about 3 percent of Egyptian scholars and bureaucrats traveling in the 14th century made trips to Rum. Petry, “Travel Patterns,” 81, 86.

25 Some scholars of Rumi origins did move to Cairo in the 15th century and remained there as revered scholars and teachers. Petry, “Travel Patterns,” 74–75.

26 Other social and professional groups were mobile as well, of course. See Faroqhi, Suraiya, Travel and Artisans in the Ottoman Empire: Employment and Mobility in the Early Modern Era (London: I. B. Tauris, 2014)Google Scholar.

27 al-Ghazzi, Badr al-Din, al-Mataliʿ al-Badriyya fi al-Manazil al-Rumiyya, ed. al-Rawadiyya, al-Mahdi ʿId (Beirut: al-Muʾassasa al-ʿArabiyya li-l-Dirasat wa-l-Nashr, 2004), 128–29Google Scholar.

28 al-Ghazzi, Najm al-Din, al-Kawakib al-Saʾira bi Aʿyan al-Miʾa al-ʿAshira, vol. 3, ed. Jabbur, Jibraʾil (Beirut: American Press, 1945), 187Google Scholar.

29 Sharaf al-Din ibn Ayyub, al-Rawd al-ʿAtir fi Ma Tayassara min Akhbar Ahl al-Qarn al-Sabiʿ ila Khitam al-Qarn al-ʿAshir, MS, Berlin Staatsbibliothek, Wetzstein II, 289, 204a; al-Ghazzi, al-Kawakib, 3:187.

30 Al-Ghazzi, al-Kawakib, 3:27–29; ibn Ayyub, Sharaf al-Din, “Dhayl Qudat Dimashq hatta Sanat al-Alf li-l-Hijra,” in Qudat Dimashq: al-Thaghr al-Bassam fi Dhikr man Wuliyya Qadaʾ al-Sham, ed. al-Munajjid, Salah al-Din (Damascus: al-Majmaʿ al-ʿIlmi al-ʿArabi, 1956), 333Google Scholar; Ayyub, Sharaf al-Din ibn, Nuzhat al-Khatir wa-Bahjat al-Nazir (Damascus: Manshurat Wizarat al-Thaqafa, 1991), 153Google Scholar.

31 A few years later, another chief qadi of Damascus punished al-Ghazzi for a similar incident. al-Burini, Hasan, Tarajim al-Aʿyan min Abnaʾ al-Zaman, vol. 2, ed. al-Munajjid, Salah al-Din (Damascus: al-Majmaʿ al-ʿIlmi al-ʿArabi, 1959–63), 99Google Scholar; al-Ghazzi, al-Kawakib, 3:29–30.

32 For near-contemporary biographies of Badr al-Din al-Ghazzi, see al-Burini, Tarajim, 2:93–105; al-Ghazzi, al-Kawakib, 3:3–10; al-Hanbali, Muhammad ibn, Durr al-Habab fi Tarikh Aʿyan Halab, vol. 2, ed. Fakhuri, Mahmud and ʿAbbara, Yahya (Damascus: Wizarat al-Thaqafa wa-l-Irshad al-Qawmi, 1973), 436–39Google Scholar; and Ibn Ayyub, al-Rawd, 239b–245a. For secondary literature, see Çollak, Fatih and Akpınar, Cemil, “Gazzi, Bedreddin,” in TDVİA, vol. 13 (Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1996), 537–39Google Scholar; Elger, Ralph, “Badr al-Din Muhammad al-Ghazzi,” Essays in Arabic Literary Biography, 1350–1850, ed. Lowry, Joseph and Stewart, Devin (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009), 98–106Google Scholar; and Elger, Ralph, “Badr ad-Din al-Gazzi und der Verrat seiner Freunde,” in Glaube, Skepsis, Poesie: Arabische Istanbul-Reisende im 16. Und 17. Jahrhundert (Beirut: Ergon, 2011)Google Scholar, 17–22.

33 Al-Burini, Tarajim, 2:98; al-Ghazzi, al-Kawakib, 3:4–5.

34 Al-Ghazzi, al-Mataliʿ al-Badriyya.

35 Kınalızade, Hasan Çelebi, Tezkiretü’ş-Şuʿara, ed. Kutluk, İbrahim (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1978), 669Google Scholar; Blackburn, Richard, trans., Journey to the Sublime Porte: The Arabic Memoir of a Sharifian Agent's Diplomatic Mission to the Ottoman Imperial Court in the Era of Suleyman the Magnificent (Würzburg: Ergon, 2005), 49Google Scholar; al-Burini, Tarajim, 2:93.

36 Al-Ghazzi, al-Kawakib, 3:5.

37 Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual, 21–33.

38 İsen, Mustafa, “Kınalızade Ali,” TDVİA, 25:417Google Scholar; Repp, R. C., The Müfti of Istanbul (London: Ithaca Press, 1986), 43–44Google Scholar.

39 İpekten, Divan Edebiyatında Edebî Muhitler, 233.

40 Kınalızade, Tezkiretü’ş-Şuʿara, 658; İsen, “Kınalızade Ali,” 417; Oktay, A. S., Kınalızâde Ali Efendi ve Ahlâk-ı Alâî (Istanbul: İz Yayıncılık, 2005), 59Google Scholar.

41 Al-Burini, Tarajim, 2:94.

42 Ibn Ayyub, “Dhayl Qudat Dimashq,” 326.

43 For example, Damascene biographers ignored Kınalızade's Turkish-language Ahlak-ı ʿAlai, despite the fact that it was written in Damascus and to this day is considered one of Kınalızade's most important works. Instead, they often mentioned two Arabic-language writings that were “in the fashion of Ibn Nubata and Ibn al-Wardi,” i.e., medieval scholars from Greater Syria. Ibn Ayyub, al-Rawd, 204b. See also al-Khafaji, Ahmad, Hadha Kitab Rayhanat al-Alibba wa-Zahrat al-Hayat al-Dunya (Cairo: al-Matbaʿa al-Wahbiyya, 1877), 321–27Google Scholar. For tezkires and other Turkish-language literature, see Kuru, Selim, “The Literature of Rum: The Making of a Literary Tradition (1450–1600),” in The Cambridge History of Turkey, vol. 2, ed. Faroqhi, Suraiya and Fleet, Kate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 54–92Google Scholar. On Persian-language historiography, see Yıldız, Sara Nur, “Ottoman Historical Writing in Persian, 1400–1600,” in Persian Historiography, ed. Melville, Charles (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012), 436–502Google Scholar.

44 Of course, not all scholars working in the Mamluk realms were Arabs. Haarmann, Ulrich, “Arabic in Speech, Turkish in Lineage: Mamluks and Their Sons in the Intellectual Life of Fourteenth-Century Egypt and Syria,” Journal of Semitic Studies 33 (1988): 81–114CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Berkey, Jonathan, “‘Silver Threads among the Coal’: A Well-Educated Mamluk of the Ninth/Fifteenth Century,” Studia Islamica 73 (1991): 109–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Rare exceptions include Molla Gürani and Muhammad al-Kafiyaji, who both however spent many years in Mamluk lands. al-Sakhawi, Muhammad, al-Dawʾ al-Lamiʿ li-Ahl al-Qarn al-Tasiʿ (Beirut: Dar Maktabat al-Hayat, 1934–36), 1:241–43, 7:259–61Google Scholar.

46 In the 1530s Ottomans began writing Turkish-language biographical dictionaries of Rumi poets (called tezkires).

47 Taşköprüzade, al-Shaqaʾiq al-Nuʿmaniyya fi ʿUlamaʾ al-Dawla al-ʿUthmaniyya (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-ʿArabi, 1975), 5.

48 Ibn Ayyub explained that Çivizade Muhyiddin Mehmed Efendi was “one of the mawlās who was famous in those lands [around Istanbul].” Ibn Ayyub, al-Rawd, 259b.

49 That is, Kitab Wafayyat al-Aʿyan. Ibid, 204b.

50 Al-Ghazzi, al-Kawakib, 3:187.

51 Ibn Ayyub, al-Rawd, 205a.

52 Kınalızade studied Qurʾan commentary and recitation, hadith, and rhetoric while in Damascus. Ibid, 204b; al-Ghazzi, al-Kawakib, 3:6, 187.

53 One exception was Ibn Hilal al-Hanafi, a scholar from Homs who studied with Kınalızade ʿAli. Ibn Ayyub, al-Rawd, 270b.

54 Al-Ghazzi, al-Mataliʿ al-Badriyya, 263–75.

55 Blackburn, Journey to the Sublime Porte, 39.

56 Ibid, 40.

57 Hamdi Savaş, “İshak Çelebi, Kılıççızâde,” TDVİA, 22:527–28.

58 Bey, Sehi, Heşt Bihişt: The Tezkire by Sehī Beg: An Analysis of the First Biographical Work on Ottoman Poets With a Critical Edition Based on Ms. Süleymaniye Library, Ayasofya, O. 3544, ed. Kut, Günay (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 1978), 158Google Scholar.

59 Ibn Tulun, Qudat Dimashq, 319.

60 Çelebi, Katib, Kashf al-Zunun ʿan Asami al-Kutub wa-l-Funun (Beirut: Dar Ihyaʾ al-Turath al-ʿArabi), 730–31Google Scholar. Al-Ghazzi wrote two versions of this book, one full and one abbreviated.

61 Al-Ghazzi, al-Kawakib, 3:5–6. Another prominent Damascene held a khatm each year at his home for Sahih al-Bukhari. Ibn Ayyub, al-Rawd, 45b.

62 Taqi al-Din al-Tamimi, Kitab Tabaqat Taqi al-Din, Süleymaniye Library, MS Ayasofya 3295, 239a.

63 In another khatm, the men first discussed and then ate together with al-Ghazzi. This session featured the influential Damascene scholars Abu al-Fath al-Maliki, Shihab al-Din al-Tibi the Elder, and Ismaʿil al-Nabulusi (the great-grandfather of ʿAbd al-Ghani), as well as the Rumi scholars Fevri Efendi and Çivizade Mehmed Efendi. Al-Burini, Tarajim, 2:95–97; al-Burini, Tarajim, 1:11–12.

64 The Umayyad mosque had been used to hold reading circles already in the 12th century. Hirschler, Konrad, The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands: A Social and Cultural History of Reading Practices (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 32–82Google Scholar.

65 Biographers often recorded seating arrangements in detail. Al-Burini, Tarajim, 2:95–96; Ibn Ayyub, al-Rawd, 115a–b. See also Hirschler, The Written Word, 47–50.

66 al-ʿAsqalani, Ibn Hajar, al-Durar al-Kamina fi Aʿyan al-Miʾa al-Thamina (Hyderabad: Daʾirat al-Maʿarif al-ʿUthmaniyya, 1929–31), 1:339Google Scholar; Gilliot, Claude, “Kontinuität und Wandel in der ‘klassischen’ islamischen Koranauslegung (II./VII.-XII./XIX. Jh.), Der Islam 85 (2010): 63–64Google Scholar.

67 For a detailed summary of their debate copied from Kınalızade's own notes, see al-Tamimi, MS Ayasofya 3295, fol. 239a.

68 Al-Ghazzi, al-Kawakib, 3:188; Ibn Hajar, al-Durar, 1:339–40; Kınalızade, Tezkiretü’ş-Şuʿara, 669; al-Tamimi, MS Ayasofya 3295, fol. 239a.

69 Al-Ghazzi, al-Kawakib, 3:188.

70 Ibid., 189.

71 Kınalızade, Tezkiretü’ş-Şuʿara, 669–70; al-Tamimi, MS Ayasofya 3295, fol. 239a. See also Katib Çelebi, Kashf al-Zunun, 730–31. Since al-Tamimi's source for the dispute was Kınalızade Ali himself, it is no surprise that he should have given this reading of the events.

72 Kınalızade, Tezkiretü’ş-Şuʿara, 670.

73 The debate was also recorded in 1571 by a certain al-Faridi, who did not attend the majlis but met with Kınalızade later. Al-Faridi, “Nukat ʿala Ma Waqʿa bayn al-Qadi ʿAli Çelebi wa-Ibn al-Shaykh Radi al-Din,” Library of the Escorial, MS Escorial 1318, fols. 14b-33a.

74 Kınalızade, Tezkiretü’ş-Şuʿara, 670.

75 Extant copies of the two treatises include Leiden University, MS Leiden 1666; Princeton University Library, MS Garrett 3817Y, fols. 93b–106b; Süleymaniye Library, MS Esad Efendi 3556, fols. 1b–29a; Süleymaniye Library, MS Mihrişah Sultan 39, fols. 45b-70b.

76 Katib Çelebi, Kashf al-Zunun, 1:122–23, 730–31.

77 Ya Sin 36:69.

78 Al-Burini, Tarajim, 2:94–95; Katib Çelebi, Kashf al-Zunun, 1:454.

79 Al-Burini, Tarajim, 2:94.

80 Blackburn, Journey to the Sublime Porte, 48. Al-Nahrawali had also studied with al-Ghazzi during the latter's pilgrimage to the holy places in 1542–43. Ibn Ayyub, al-Rawd, 262a–b.

81 Al-Shawkani's account is not entirely reliable. He claims that al-Ghazzi was in Istanbul when the manuscript was reviewed, but no other contemporary account confirms this. Al-Burini, Tarajim, 2:104; al-Shawkani, Muhammad, al-Badr al-Taliʿ bi-Mahasin Min Baʿd al-Qarn al-Sabiʿ, vol. 2 (Cairo: Maktabat al-Saʿada, 1929–30), 252Google Scholar. There is an autograph copy of al-Tafsir al-Manzum in the Süleymaniye Library dated 1554–55 (962). Süleymaniye Library, MS Hüsnü Paşa 11.

82 Al-Ghazzi, al-Mataliʿ al-Badriyya, 268.

83 Al-Burini, Tarajim, 2:94, 104.

84 Al-Shawkani, al-Badr al-Taliʿ, 2:252.

85 Al-Burini, Tarajim, 2:104.

86 Ibid.

87 Ibid., 105.

88 This was the opinion of ʿAbd al-Latif al-Shafiʿi (a student of Najm al-Din al-Ghazzi) in the 1630s. Süleymaniye Library, MS Fazıl Ahmed Paşa 1390, fol. iia. For a similar opinion, see Süleymaniye Library, MS Kemankeş 240, fols. 70a–b.

89 Al-Burini, Tarajim, 2:94.

90 Coffee and the works of Ibn ʿArabi were others. See Ibn Tulun, al-Tamattuʿ bi-l-Iqran, 118, 174–75, 216–17, 264, 266, 280.

91 Al-Ghazzi held another khatm for the piece in 1569–70. Al-Burini, Tarajim, 1:11–12; al-Burini, Tarajim, 2:97.

92 Graham, William, “Traditionalism in Islam: An Essay in Interpretation,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23 (1993): 512–14Google Scholar. For the controversial nature of the written tradition, see Cook, Michael, “The Opponents of the Writing of Tradition in Early Islam,” Arabica 44 (1997): 437–530Google Scholar.

93 ʿAli, Mustafa, The Ottoman Gentleman of the Sixteenth Century: Mustafa Âli's Mevāʾidü’n-Nefāʾis fī ḳavāʿidi’l-Mecālis, “Tables of Delicacies Concerning the Rules of Social Gatherings,” trans. Brookes, Douglas (Cambridge, Mass.: Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University, 2003), 4Google Scholar.

94 Süleymaniye Library, MS Ragıp Paşa 1474, fol. 190b ff.

95 Fleischer, “The Lawgiver as Messiah”; Gülru Necipoğlu, “A Kanun for the State, a Canon for the Arts: Conceptualizing the Classical Synthesis of Ottoman Art and Architecture,” Soliman le Magnifique et son temps, 195–216; Feldman, Walter, Music of the Ottoman Court: Makam, Composition and the Early Ottoman Instrumental Repertoire (Berlin: Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung, 1996), 24Google Scholar; and Kuru, “The Literature of Rum.”

96 Ahmed and Filipovic, “The Sultan's Syllabus,” 210–11.

97 Al-Suyuti himself boasted of his fame throughout the Islamic world. Saleh, Marlis, “al-Suyūṭī and his Works: Their Place in Islamic Scholarship from Mamluk Times to the Present,” The Mamluk Studies Review 5 (2001): 77Google Scholar.

98 Al-Ghazzi, al-Kawakib, 3:4, 7.

99 Ahmed and Filipovic, “The Sultan's Syllabus,” 200.

100 Al-Tamimi, MS Ayasofya 3295, fol. 239a; MS Escorial 1318, fols. 14b–15a.

101 Al-Burini, Tarajim, 1:17, 21; al-Burini, Tarajim, 2:103; al-Ghazzi, Najm al-Din, Lutf al-Samar wa-Qatf al-Thamar min Tarajim Aʿyan al-Tabaqat al-Ula min al-Qarn al-Hadi ʿAshar, ed. al-Shaykh, Mahmud (Damascus: Wizarat al-Thaqafa wa-l-Irshad al-Qawmi, 1981), 1: 358–59Google Scholar.

102 Al-Burini, Tarajim, 1:73; Ibn Ayyub, al-Rawd, 113a.

103 Ibn Ayyub, “Dhayl Qudat Dimashq,” 329.

104 Grafton, Anthony, “A Sketch Map of a Lost Continent: The Republic of Letters,” in Grafton, Anthony, Worlds Made by Words: Scholarship and Community in the Modern West (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009), 9–34Google Scholar.

105 Burak, Guy, “Dynasty, Law and the Imperial Provincial Madrasa: The Case of al-Madrasa al-ʿUthmaniyya in Ottoman Jerusalem,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 45 (2013): 111–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

106 A different picture emerges if we examine legal practice. Meshal, “Antagonistic Sharīʿas.”

107 Scholars and poets of Arab descent are rare in tezkires such as Hasan Çelebi's or in Taşköprüzade's al-Shaqaʾiq al-Nuʿmaniyya. Even Kınalızade ʿAli's 1566 al-Tabaqat al-Hanafiyya, which constructed a single scholarly lineage from Abu Hanifa to Kemalpaşazade, included no contemporary Arab scholars.

108 Al-Burini's biography of a danişmend contained a detailed review of the meaning, pronunciation, and etymology of that word. Al-Burini, Tarajim, 1:77.

109 Kritovoulos, Michael, History of Mehmed the Conqueror, trans. Riggs, Charles (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1954)Google Scholar; Tezcan, Baki, “Ethnicity, Race, Religion and Social Class: Ottoman Markers of Difference,” in The Ottoman World, ed. Woodhead, Christine (London: Routledge, 2012), 163n18Google Scholar.