Projections of Māturīdite-Ḥanafite Identity on the Ottomans Cover Image

Mâtürîdî-Hanefî Aidiyetin Osmanlı’daki İzdüşümleri
Projections of Māturīdite-Ḥanafite Identity on the Ottomans

Author(s): Mehmet Kalaycı
Subject(s): Islam studies, Religion and science , History of Islam, Contemporary Islamic Thought, Sociology of Religion
Published by: Cumhuriyet Üniversitesi İlahyat Fakültesi
Keywords: Ottomans; Ash‘arism; Māturīdism; Ḳāḍīzādelīs; Naqshbandiyya; al-Firqa al-Nājiya; al-Irāda al-Juz’iyya

Summary/Abstract: Māturīdism is an Ottoman identity and this identity was not limited, as is commonly believed, to the last period of the Empire. It maintained its formal existence throughout the Ottoman history. Nevertheless, the context in which the Māturīdism was located or with which it was associated changed in the course of time. In the early period when the eclectic way of thinking was dominant, Māturīdism as a creed was apparent mainly in the jurists whose ascetic identity was prominent and partly in the mystical currents that were essentially continuations of Yasawiyya. At this point, the Bukhara-centered Ḥanafī legal literature played a distinctive role. At the time of Meḥmed II and in the following period during which the philosophical kalām dominated the scene, the Māturīdism was relatively passive and was in search of a position against the Ash‘arism. The new Rāzian paradigm of thought that began to be felt strongly in the Ottoman lands with Meḥmed II as an attempt of integration into the global circulation of knowledge prevented to a certain extent the visibility of Māturīdism. However, even in this period, Māturīdism was remarkably reflected in the muqaddimāt-i arba‘a literature which was directly sponsored by Meḥmed II. The tradition of philosophical kalām in the Ottoman scholarship, just when it was about to yield significant results, was interrupted due to the struggle against the Ṣafawids. Transformation of this political tension, at the same time, into a fight against Shiism also brought about a constriction in the religious thought of the Ottomans. Shiism and its all other variants were bitterly attacked under the main heading of Rāfiḍa. Unfortunately such a refutational approach proved a boomerang and returned in time striking the Ottoman Ṣūfīs who stood near the line of the Ardabil Shrine before its Shiitization. Ḥanafī fatwā literature was used extensively in the refutation texts against Ṣafawids. This brought to the fore at first the Ḥanafite and then the Māturīdite identity. This paper attempts to analyze this changing emphasis on Māturīdism in the Ottoman period and the political and intellectual factors that supported and nourished it.

  • Issue Year: 20/2016
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 9-72
  • Page Count: 63
  • Language: Turkish