Abdal Hakim Murad – Ebussuud Effendi Paradigms of Leadership
AI: Summary ©
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AI: Transcript ©
Smilla hamdu lillah wa salatu salam ala Rasulillah while he was
a happy woman who Allah.
This has been a rather
varied journey through certain
interesting
bye biographical stories, taken from the enormous length and
breadth historically and geographically of the ummah. And
that's part of the point I suppose to indicate that those who follow
the prophetic excellence,
have their own coordinates in space and time and implement that
excellence in ways that are proper to that particular location. This
is kind of obvious.
What I want to do today is to look at somebody who is a leader in a
very distinctive context,
which is that of the Ottoman bureaucracy.
A couple of months ago, we looked at the figure of che hablo, honey
and Diablo see, it was as we saw for a while, Mufti of Damascus,
which was an official Ottoman appointment, but who by and large,
shunned the company of officials. Even more so in our previous
lecture, the one we did in Ramadan, on his on the Dean ollie
up the great saint of Muslim Delhi, who had two doors in his
house, as you will recall, one that it normally is and one that
it used to leave if any state official should pay him a visit.
This is particularly the custom of the,
of the Sufis in Islamic history who prefer to take the side of the
population and particularly the poor against the inevitable
depredations of Imperial bureaucracies and civil services.
Not so easy a luxury however, for those who work in the judiciary,
and Islam as a legal tradition
necessarily wishes to shape not just the content, but also the
conduct and the procedural matrix of the law.
In some contexts, such as that of, say, 18th century, West Africa,
how was the land that was administered in a very,
elemental, primordial, spontaneous and bureaucratized way, the lack
of complexity in what was still partly a nomadic society enabled
that, but in the context of North India, under the great moguls,
with steep bureaucracy and their propensity for shitty
elaborations, and the publication of fatwah collections, and also in
the context of other Imperial realities, such as the Ottoman
Empire, the procedures of the judiciary and the ways in which
the Sharia apparently in its point of origin, image emanating from so
different, a cultural and an administrative context became a
matter of intense and inevitable concern by jurists, they couldn't
like many of the Sufis just leave by a backdoor. It was their
responsibility to step up and to ensure as far as they could, the
ethical and Sharia compliant application of the structures of
enormous creaking Imperial bureaucracies and in the Ottoman
Empire. This was perhaps the largest of them all, if you
venture into the moldering corridors of the Ottoman archives
in Istanbul, you will see that so much was retained maybe 110
million different files and documents it said to be the
world's largest collection of pre modern archives anywhere. Every
last thing was kept there, not just in duplicate in the
provinces. Sometimes they survived. Sometimes they didn't,
but many of them particularly from the mid 15th century onwards, in
their crabbed Persianate civil service, almost illegible
handwriting of a big Imperial bureaucracy at the sublime port,
there be ally, it was a bureaucratic state and needed to
be because of its size and complexity and the fact that as
the early modern period dawns, the Ottoman Empire was part of a
global world of trade, the exchange of technologies and
information and simplicity was not an option.
The longevity of the Ottoman State the reasons for it
Continue to follow our brows. Why is it that the British Empire
lasted maybe for 90 years, and it's kind of established for the
Ottoman Empire lasted maybe for 600 years, still just about a
living memory for a few real old timers in a few walk and Anatolian
places into our age. But it emerged in the 13th century, which
is not bad for a single family. No ancient Egyptian dynasty, father
to son lasted that long. So the stability of this shadier centered
state and it's evident difference from the original prophetic model,
the huge size of it, the variation of languages and cultures, the
existence of things like gunpowder, the necessity to
maintain a huge Navy, these were things that are not part of the
original Syrah matrix for the generation of the Shery and
required the careful exercise of EHD had. So what I want to look at
today is to see how one of our
Muslim personalities, not necessarily one without flaws,
existed in the context of that enormous Constantinople civil
service, and was able to affect change despite the enormous amount
of inertia that tends to affect any large institution and to see
if we can offer some remarks about how Islam was constitutionally
figured.
At the eve of modernity, what was the interpretation and the
structures of Islam that were inherited by the Muslims as
modernity starts to impact firstly, through the advent of new
military technologies and the printing press, and then the need
to embark in permanent treaty and trading relationships with with
the concept of, of Europe, the Ottomans are the ones who had to
deal with those questions before anyone else did simply because of
their geography. They were a European state.
The most prestigious core provinces of the Ottoman Empire,
were taken to be the European provinces.
Istanbul was a European city, the previous capital adherence, there
had been a European city, they saw themselves as rebellions in the
newest Anatolia, the other side of the Bosphorus. And then after the
early 16th century, the Arab provinces were added, but we need
to remember that the center of gravity for colorful Islam was
taken to the European provinces, Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia,
Hungary, these worth the heartlands of kala for as long.
So let's see if we can use this biography as an opportunity to
offer some reflections on
how that works. And to see the extent to which classical, in this
case Hanafi, essentially 11th 12th century horror, certainly some are
undone interpretations of the Hanafi tradition,
successfully underpinned the stability and that might have that
quality. And the extent also to which it turned out not to be
practical, and indeed, of either utilitarian or systematic HD had
based transformations. So let's start to think about that. How
does the Sharia this seems to be in many ways, the problem of
modern Islamic politics, which emerges in specific space and time
in seventh century Arabia, and which takes itself to be revealed
law and therefore, in principle, not open to change, become the
successful Legal, jurisprudential constitutional foundation and
fabric for a gunpowder Empire almost 1000 years later, let alone
our modern world of big data and globalization. So some
contemporary lessons here, perhaps, but the person I want to
talk about specifically who is really the parodic Matic Ottoman
Arlin, not just in terms of the legal and the spiritual culture,
which he occupied, but the fact that he is in a golden age is the
great scholar of the 16th century stage of Solomon the magnificent
and Istanbul is the jewel of the world. But also because, in many
ways, he understands the tension that exists between local Imperial
pragmatism and the idealizing discourse of the Sharia and is in
the Turkish memory at any rate, regarded as the one who tries to
bring customary law, satanic decree, together with the ideals
of the of the Hanafi Shediac. So we'll see the
extent to which that is needed and the ways that he found in order to
bring together that, in many ways,
difficult convergence. So this is episode
ABC viewed as the taxi
generally regarded as the greatest of the Ottoman scholars, which had
begun really with Gaudi ice at the time of the first Ottoman capital
in in Iznik. In the 13th century and ends with
Scheffel Islam was the for summary in the early 20th century and the
abolition of the position of Sheikh Al Islam may be a bigger
sort of constitutional earthquake for the Muslims even though the
abolition of the the kala foot because a Kaley foot in many ways,
as we will see is a kind of symbolic figure
with very few executive and religious functions, whereas the
Sheikh Al Islam was 100 years ago, everybody was thinking about what
was the Schakel Islam's view on a particular topic. And if you go to
Solomon's Great Mosque, which as we'll see was really created in
partnership with apostles.
Next to the mosque is an empty space, which is where the office
of the sheath of Islam was located. If you're a British
Muslim in the 19th century, you wanted to go on Hajj, and you were
called Toby or something.
The way to get that would be to apply to the office of the
Scheffel Islam.
Not an Islamic papacy, but certainly unanimously accepted
among Sunni Muslims as the highest source of fatwa. So again, we'll
be thinking about what is the legal system that has fatwas that
are not kind of executive decisions, but a kind of
consultative or authoritative statements? How does that fit so
Ataturk had the building, demolished, of course, and the
last year when Islam was chased into exile, and that kind of empty
space is sort of symbolic of something that has caused many of
the decentralizing fissiparous instabilities of the Muslim ummah,
ever since, I guess, 1926, the post was, was abolished, and the
Kemalist were dancing on the grave of the old Islamic constitutions.
So, Episode affendi, a little bit of bio data, first of all,
and the bio data in the Ottoman context comes from, in most cases,
although you can learn things about the individuals by reading
their works, and particularly their fat was anecdotes by
scholars of the day. But basically the sources we have for the
hallmark of the Ottoman Empire begin with a scholar called
Tashkent Rosada, who writes a book called a Chicago, a nominee,
which is something like the purple petals or something that really
like really flowery titles for their books. And the writing is
quite extraordinarily Baroque and florid as well. Not an easy read.
Tochka presided is one of the great scholars of the 16th
century, puts together this work.
And he also writes a book if you're familiar with Arabic
literature called a Mr. Harada, which is very generally used, it's
in
Arabic, which is a list of all of the grip sciences of Islam, and
those that have practice, not just sort of Tafseer in Hadith, but
also geometry, what are the main books on geometry and finding that
Qibla and all of these smaller sciences, hundreds of them, as it
turns out, that Scripture is an important scholar of the Ottoman
realm, and he organizes his book a Chicago cannot earlier, not
according to the dates of the scholars, but inconveniently
according to the reign of the Sultan, in which each of the
scholars happen to die. So it takes a bit of navigating
touchcare presided doesn't include a notice on it pursued offended
because it's just too early. So the main information that we have
for his life comes from his successor, who is called no his
idea or thought you offended who is also from Istanbul, but spends
much of his career in this group, which is present day Scopia, which
is one of the great cities for the ALA map and for judgeship, now the
capital of whatever they call it, nowadays, northern Macedonia, but
still has some major Ottoman structures there and it's
certainly a city worth visiting and it still has a Mufti at the
moment is office but of course, part of the national structure of
Macedonia sadly diminished.
But Muslims are 40% of the population in Macedonia. They
survived the 20th century massacres and it's still alive as
a Muslim place but many of the great all about the altar
Minute by wood as part of the very complex or almost ritualized
process of career progression, spend some time in the great city
of this group. So I'll talk he is in his group. And
partly during that time, he writes his own book, which is a
continuation of touch could reside this book, which he calls her dark
meadows of truths, which follows
the form of magic does translation of touchcare Prasad is books, it
goes into Turkish and the same old, annoying format, you have to
know the death dates of the assault on and when the scholar
died before you can find the notice. It's not alphabetical.
It's but these books are so widely used by the scholars that
it was easy
if you are familiar with the tradition to navigate, so we have
of course, as you would expect, all of these books in the CMC
library
and here is his notice work read all of it with all of its kind of
pulling out the organ stops of Baroque
16th century prose but here we are, and Manuel Azzam Ibusuki and
I Maddie and I Maddie is what they call him but we don't really know
where this Eymard comes from. It's they don't explain that who are
Dino and dunya so he he goes trumpet blasts who I love so well
mana who will via to who was the rebuttal all yours autonomo
facility in optimization was removed till Annemie moved move
Neil bidder will certainly be at the earland if toddy will is it
sorry Bill inertia, the ebony sorry, Bill earshot blah, blah,
and then you get some complicated poetry. So, it begins with his
fanfare, he is religion and to the world. He is the expression and
the meaning of the expression. He is the utmost limit. He has the
highest peak the soul time of the commentators, the the vanguard of
the army of the latest scholars, the Mufti of all nations, the
destroyer of innovations and sins, the one who, whose robe
majestically trails the tech the the train of generosity and
Felicity, you get the ideas is very elaborate Baroque prose. And
he is Abu Hanifa Sani
he is the second Abu Hanifa. This is what the Ottomans like to call
him because he's rising above the parochialism, the pessimism about
what the latest scholars are able to accomplish in Islamic history.
There's this kind of fatalism about decline. But at the same
time, we the Ottomans have produced another Abu Hanifa
Ottomans, of course, overwhelmingly the heirs to the
Hanafi tradition. Hanafi tradition really has it heartland,
particularly kind of formula formulation.
earliest texts, it's Heartland in Central Asia. Hola, San. The
Turkic speaking places Turkic Farsi speaking some Afghans in
particular.
That's why 400 in Maori nanny becomes one of the great
authorities for Ottoman is buried very close to a man that already
who is really the founder of the military, the tradition of Hanafi,
quasi rationalizing theology that becomes the official doctrine
really, of the Ottoman state. So the intellectual flow into the
Ottoman Empire is not from the south from the Arab world, but
from the east. And there's historical migratory reasons for
that. How did the Turks come to the Anatolia and even the Balkans,
when they originate far to the east, almost in Mongolia? Because
the Mongols are pushing them West. Remember how Rumi leaves belt and
ends up in Konya? They're refugees. Similarly, the Turks are
migrating to the west, particularly the scholars. nomads
have been leaving for a long time, and that's and working as kind of
bodyguards and henchmen and heavies, and that's how they come
to dominate the Ambassade kala efforts and even in the time of
bizarrely, these are the Seljuks the Ottomans are the inheritors of
this east to west migratory flow from places like Kashkari. Some
are kind sheshe which is now Tashkent, Bukhara. Those are their
roots. They look to the east and so overwhelming. It's a Hanafi
matter really tradition and in herbal, so Old Settlers and legal
compendious, we don't really see much reference to the other mega
hip.
Even though by his time the Arab world, the shadowy world of Syria,
Palestine is part of Imperial reality. And Sultan Solomon even
adds North Africa, Algiers becomes an ottoman city which
He's Maliki, but it's a Hanafi state.
So he's Abu Hanifa. The second now
we get the bio data then from, I'll tell you fnd.
The most distinguished
contemporary presentation is called an embodied form of magic
formula of Manchester University episode The Islamic legal
tradition, which is really first rate and actually quite accessible
explanation, not just of his life and times, but also of the
intellectual challenges which he faced as somebody who centuries
after the incipient of the Sharia in Medina in the seventh century,
is seeing how it can still work in a credible, justifiable way in the
context of this post Byzantine Imperial structure. So I'm going
to be following Collins book pretty closely
during the course of this journey, so basic bio data we don't quite
know when he was born somewhere around 1490.
And his early life is Anatolian not rebellion. Romania is
basically the Balkan provinces of the Empire rule many obsolete term
now, Romanian is the academic world. Family is from a while the
minor place called a skillet, which is kind of North Central
Anatolia.
His father was somebody called mohideen, offended, who was a
pupil of a very distinguished scholar called Ali Cousteau, who
is one of these summer can kind of refugees, migrants, fortune
seekers who come to the new imperial courts of the West, from
the east Ali Cousteau is a famous astronomer
and helps to get astronomy going in Felek amongst the Ottomans, but
also significant interpreter of Arabic philosophy and theology.
During the reign of met met the second, one of the things that the
new ruler had wanted to do was to establish the kind of SAC city of
Constantinople as an intellectual center.
So he would invite in scholars and promote debates. And one of the
big debates was between
was about the effectiveness of Imam Al Ghazali is refutation of
Ibn Sina, the famous to have it and philosopher it's one of the
sonnet moments of Islamic metaphysics, and the assault on
recognize this, these are highly educated men magnet,
master of different languages, wrote poetry, cultivated,
cultivated man, who wanted these debates to be worked out what is
the correct relationship between reason revelation, I know Calam
philosopher, he was interested so he commissioned this big debate.
And some of the
the heavy guns include people like hajizadeh, who is the Minister had
enclosures it who is the Chief Audit of balsa, which again is
like who scoop one of these key Imperial appointments.
And who writes a book called to half a dozen philosopher
in which she revisits causality is challenged Ibn Sina Ali Cousteau
is writing more from a kind of Addisonian perspective, and then
come on Pasha is who is really the first great autumn and Shavel
Islam. This line of shiftless norms that we had until 1920
Something
writes a commentary on hundreds ideas work that becomes Islamic
intellectual history in Istanbul gets off to a bang with a very
interesting dialogue of the different to halfwords. So Ali
Khrushchev is like the great uncle of Abu Saud offended and that
strong emphasis on the kind of philosophical rationalizing
approach leaves its mark on him at his first teacher, somebody called
my Ed Zadeh,
who is based in a Massiah this is a kind of nice central Anatolian
town, which is politically important because it was the
customer the Ottoman Sultans to get rid of their kind of annoying
teenage sons
and send them off as governors of certain cities, which would be
cities with a kind of royal mosque and a palace so it was comfortable
but also useful training for the time when they would,
or at least one of them would end up being successor to the to the
to the Ottoman
So alternate. So and asiyah is an important place to be. And much as
we'll see of the Ottoman system depends on patronage. How do you
get to be up all day, or grand vizier, or Grand Admiral or
whatever. It was meritocratic to some extent. And they didn't have,
unlike England at the time, anything like a hereditary
aristocracy. This is important to understand, because we think of
the Ottoman Empire as being kind of feudal based on the peasantry
and
tax farmers. But
the Ottoman system, because it was based on the Islamic law of
inheritance, didn't really have the kind of inherited aristocracy
that comes from having a law of primogeniture.
When the Lord of the Manor dies, his estate, whether he likes it or
not, is divided up equally more, according to Sharia principles
between his sons and the daughters get something and widows get
something, if that's something that he cannot do anything about.
So these bigger states get broken up, inevitably over time. So one
of the features of Islamic civilization is that big sort of
families of Dukes, barons, and so forth that you get in sort of
English, Western history, generally, certainly, in the
Byzantium context, doesn't really exist in the Islamic context where
the Sultan when somebody dies, we'll just appoint somebody else
has maybe helped him to win a battle or written a nice book will
appoint him to be the new tax farmer for that particular
region.
So a different kind of system.
And, but nonetheless, these
grants were in the royal gift. So it was meritocratic, to some
extent.
If you want to battle, you could expect to be rewarded. The Romans
had something quite similar to this. But you couldn't expect to
pass it on to your eldest son, particularly if you if you're
wealthy, everybody had several wives, slave goals, it was going
to go to a lot of inheritors, it would be broken up the soul time
would reclaim it. And somebody else who just won a battle or won
the royal favor would be in your house
the year after you die. So
a different kind of constitutional arrangement that isn't really
feudal.
But at the same time, the system of patronage How did you get these
plum jobs which are well paid jobs in the Alanna hierarchy, what they
call the EMEA
or in the sort of, as it were, more secular branches of the civil
service tax collectors and the like. It was basically done
through having friends in high places, and through somehow
getting into the charmed circle of the royal family. So being a
Massiah was the first significant step for him, because at the time,
this is now the 1470s, the royal prince who is governing a Massiah
is Prince by as it who actually ends up becoming buys it the
second the assault on 1481 to 1512.
Words ideas and they do a scholar of a Massiah is hanging out with
the salt on to be an introduces the at this time very young
episode to the prince. And under Bayer's, it won't be as it becomes
assault on this friendship bears fruit. So we had saw that rises to
the hierarchy. And the hierarchy at the time meant that you were
appointed versus and redress, to a fairly small college, and then to
a larger college. And then you have become the gaudy because I
called he had to serve some time as an academic first, if he was
appointed to a major town called the maca, lokasi of Damascus, the
party of Sarajevo would be appointed from the ranks of people
who really been teaching and researching. And then after being
a quality for a while, you'd move up to more and more prestigious
cities, so balsa, Edina, and then Istanbul with the plum, that of
judgeships and the Ottoman Empire. And beyond that there were three
further positions.
And these positions were called the two military judges, or the
Alaska cars Oscar of Anatolia. And above that, the military judge of
Remaliah. And then above that, in a complicated way, but not
necessarily more powerful, but more prestigious, and better paid
was the position of Sheikh Al Islam, which was basically giving
fat to us. So
these military judges, emerged in the context of the early rapid
expansion of the Ottoman Empire.
I, in which normally I call the is the call day for a bit here,
particular place. And hopefully he knows the place and usages of the
place. And Islamic law is really quite responsive to local customs.
But if you've got the army and the Ottoman Empire, we had a big
standing army, really the first proper standing army, the world
had seen since the decline of ancient Rome, not really a feudal
Navy, but they had a permanent army in the Janissaries. They
could call upon landowners, of course, as part of the conditions
of the satanic grant of the land to perform military service and
were betide them. They didn't turn up outside the assault on standard
on the day,
allocated for the beginning of some new marching to Hungary or
something.
But there was a standing army as well. And these huge armies,
100,000 men or more with all of their camp followers, like moving
city, couldn't be subject to local judges, but had to have their own
judge. And because the soul time was with the army, in most cases,
this was like the whole state on the move.
And because of the difficulties of logistics, it would take about
three months to march from Istanbul to the frontiers in
Europe to the gates of Austria or Hungary, and it was like the
capital itself moving so to be the judge of that army was a hugely
prestigious and important post usually carried with it, the
benefits of associating with the assault on writing beside him,
helping him to write his, perhaps not very first week poetry as he
kind of rode through these Serbian roads. And it will this was
important, so the military judge of Anatolia above that the
military judge of Remaliah and then you got to be the shakily
Sampson, what a inside it having hung out with Prince Basie in a
Massiah is rising very rapidly. No.
Episode father is mohideen offended
doesn't just have an uncle who is kind of Addison and philosopher
but also is very involved in the life of the Tariqas the Tory cuts,
and is primarily known for this.
So Baylor's it to seems to have had a great respect for him,
brings him to Istanbul and gives him land and Bill's attacking
Azaria Sufi lodge for him, which becomes one of the places where
members of the royal family Imperial elite
heads of scribal offices and palace will go for blessings and
ask advice from the from the CHE from episodes father, so he seems
to unite in himself these two worlds of the external and
internal which is normal for all of that it's as alien way we saw
an abalone nebula see how it teach in the morning to slough off in
the afternoon. Bringing together these two seas is part of what the
major scholars do an always as important for each jihad.
And this is regularly referred to by the authors of solid
because the jurist usually has to spend time finding the compromises
in the messy world of real human situations. And the there can be
quite a few possible alternative judgments on any given issue,
particularly if you're mufti, there could be maybe half a dozen
different possible factors that you can give in the context of a
given legal situation. What is it that inclines the soul of the
jurists to think that one view seems to be intuitively or humanly
the better one rather than the other? To some extent, it's
subjective. It's the givenness of the Mufti and life, whether he's
had an argument with his family, whatever, there are human issues
at stake and the Allamah are very aware of this, and want to make
sure that the jurist as the always a he is making these choices is
not in a place of emotion and ego.
So this is the idea that a juris prudence depends on spirituality,
you have to overcome the ego and not get too involved in
I don't like the look of this litigant. And he will I saw him
smoking and all of those things that can sometimes sway
juries but has to be absolutely as neutral as possible. And that's a
spiritual, not a legal exercise. So, very often we find that the
really great legal thinkers in Islam have been those who have
been quite actively involved in Tasmania spirituality of various
kinds and the respect that later generations show for their
judgment is partly a respect for the
An inner cultivation that has enabled them to be as objective
and as also as merciful as possible. So there is, episodes
father is constant, his nice new techer in Istanbul. And this is
also very characteristic of the Ottoman state that the Sultan's
like to have company, the loneliness of power is a burden.
And they associate not just with jurists,
but very often with Sufis as well. And this is a consistent feature
of the Ottoman State right up to
89 in 19th century Istanbul, who was maybe the closest of the
automat to Sultan Abdullah Hamid
Cheveley che from Damascus, having a spiritual mentor, a palace
chaplain, if you like, was just part of the way in which things
worked. And this goes right back to the foundation of the dynasty.
And also the fact that these miracle workers charismatic
leaders enjoy enormous support amongst the masses. The guy
selling kebabs on the street corner in salt on Akhmed might
really love the Mufti. But he's not really going to get directly
involved in the reasons why the Mufti is such a Great Mufti. But a
miracle worker, a saint, a Sufi, somebody who's living a life of
poverty and helping the poor curing people is more interesting
to the masses. And therefore one important way for the ruler in his
very kind of Empyrion detached Palace world of remaining in touch
with the masses is through these purveyors of popular charisma. So
sort of Ohan in many ways, the founder of the dynasty, spent a
lot of time with these people, the famous Gately Barber, kind of
almost kind of animistic age of ancient Turkish, too. So Worf is
the man with the deers because famously, he used to hang out with
deer in the forest, he was forest dweller, and
promised this whole time that he's never going to leave his forest
and come to the palace. And the only time when he obeys the
subtonic decree is when he actually takes an enormous tree
from his forest, carries it on his back and plants it in the
courtyard at the Sultan's palace and say now I think it's alright
for me to spend some time here but you should really come to the
woods if you want to be my disciple. There's a big thing
between trees, spirituality and satanic authority that is
persistent in Ottoman history that goes back to the very early
Ottoman period when the kind of nomads and they haven't really got
a city yet, so
that becomes characteristic. The geekly Baba refuses to soul times
requests to live in his rice Palace, says he prefers his
forest. But if the salt hunt chooses, he can build him a place
for his disciples to live out in the forest to take care. And so
steep patronage of dervish lodges and monasteries, again, is one of
the ways in which the the elite maintain sort of patronage and
connection with popular piety. And this certainly continued in the
time of baozi it with the relationship with episodes, Father
Bay as it is one of the the best love tall tons, and many of them
they weren't the kind of guys who you'd want to marry your daughter
particularly kind of rough,
isolated exercise and absolute power in a difficult age and
geography Bay as it was known for justice, or concern for the less
advantaged sectors of his population and took seriously the
Ottoman claimed to be Arlen Pienaar refuge of the world. So
it's Bay as it who writes the famous letter to the Jews of
Spain.
Okay. 1492 Ferdinand and Isabella, disaster is coming not just to the
Moors of Spain, but also to the Jews, who writes to them inviting
them to come to his well protected domains. And many of them come. Of
course, this helps to repopulate Istanbul and great and sober
traders, an economic asset but to this day, the Jews of Istanbul
still speak a kind of antiquated Spanish.
That's their heritage. They go from one end of the Mediterranean
to another seeking Muslim protection. So he's the one who
did that He even sent the Ottoman Navy. It was it was quite a
journey at the time to Spain.
In order to get to the places where Muslims and Jews are being
expelled, and he sends the famous Ottoman Admiral canal race,
in his flagship, the Gherkin, which is said to have been the
biggest ship in the world at the time outside China, which carried
700 men, in order to go to these coastal areas of Spain were almost
on the beaches, the Jews, and the Muslims are congregating. Those
who refuse to accept baptism and take them off to the well
protected domains. Navy is important for the Ottoman Empire,
because if you think about the geography, it's almost like the
Roman Empire again, where the center of things is, is a sea, the
middle sea.
And the remainders of the Crusaders, the Knights of St.
John, who have installed themselves in the island of
Rhodes, are a real headache because the holy warriors
Crusaders, and one of the big things they do is to intercept the
ships that are taking people on the Hajj. And one of the main
achievements of Solomon's reign is that he reduces the island of
Rhodes and Chuck's out the Knights of St. John, but in a kind of
chivalric moment, he's so impressed by the courage in
defending their fortress, that he doesn't just imprison them, sell
them into slavery, but allows them to leave some of his advisors so
these people, devils, don't let them leave. But he allows them to
leave and they go to Malta, and they're still there, the Knights
of St. John Sovereign Order, and they cause trouble for the
Ottomans later on, and they were raiding for slaves in North
Africa. Anyway.
So the Navy is also an important part of the Ottoman Ottoman world.
So
by as it eldest son of method, the conqueror, that oddly is somebody
who is patronizing these families, but it's a difficult time because
there is it has a brother Gen assault on who also wants to be
assault on and fleas and takes refuge with the Pope of all
people. He goes to Rome, and the Pope kind of imprisoned him. And
you can see the castle Santangelo which is the Pope's Castle, which
is next to the Thai Boats, still still there. And that's where a
gentle tone live for years and years, with his wives and his
pages and his own scollard It's kind of a little ottoman world in
the center of Rome. And the pope kind of holds him prisoner and
forces the Ottomans to pay an enormous sum of money just for
keeping him there, otherwise let him go and there'll be a civil war
in Anatolia is one of the big traumatic moments of the Ottoman
dynasty gentle tongue goes to France as well as the recent book
about him or the tragic figure who writes them rather good poetry.
So, these are
troubled times.
But
also a golden age in many ways.
And then we find episode is working his way up as a kind of
very junior scholar in his teens,
very proficient, he's become a half as at a very early age and
with his father, he has worked on the basic text and a few folk. But
he is
he gets his first break when he becomes a new Darius which is the
chief teacher because another asset tended to be the kind of
possession of a given
a given teacher there will be subordinate scholars, but to be
the Madera This was to be the lead scholar with a daily salary have a
certain number of silver coins, aka chairs. So you'd have a 10
object MedDRA service kind of basic 120 Archer
madressa was a bit better and so forth. So he's appointed to this
little one. Now let me see if I can read some of this awesome text
just because it's
a dead language, see if we can revive it. Madrid is key and
they're positive.
In dazi Island, we will draw division Minori of shore up Josie
shahadi almost the end of our early holiday, for pedigree, etc.
So, what our target is saying is that he becomes, first of all,
a shining light, a candle lit in the murderous of
this
village near Istanbul
where the light of his knowledge amongst all
present was
a wonder even though he was just still in the shade of his own
father and at the beginning of his his
road
yes
sometimes you have to turn several pages before you come to the verb
in these old Ottoman texts
Well,
the point is that he's made his first break his teaching in this
little village near
Istanbul and he is
a person persisting in this until another disturbing event in the
life of the Emperor takes place in the 15th 12 when they as it leaves
the throne abdicates it's a little bit unclear what's happened maybe
his been forced to resign by his son. And now the emperor is in a
very different hands of assault on Salim the first so Bay as it is
ugly, the just Salim is Yahoo was the grim
and he is the paradigmatic Ottoman obsessive conqueror during his
eight years, he increases the landmass of the Empire by 70% is
the one who conquers the Arab world is the one who at the Battle
of child Iran defeats the the extreme war that she of Iran
secures eastern Anatolia, his spent his life in the saddle. It's
even said that he dies as a result of contracting a disease for
fungus that is produced in saddle leather kind of dulls him to death
and his his grip morphed, it has come up pressures are there. And
they have very close relationship and camel pastures that in many
ways is the immediate predecessor of episode in terms of the kinds
of things that he writes about the way in which he uses this post of
shameless Nam. In order to guide the soul turn very irascible, in
many ways towards more correct understanding of the Sharia is a
difficult kind of post in 1514.
More he didn't offend it, episodes father dies. And in 1516, Ray and
Zadeh, who is his first kind of scholarly colleague, and the one
who has helped him to get this patronage die. So it's now in his
mid 20s. And it's really not clear if Bayazid is gone. And his
difficult son is now in charge of his father's garden whose patron
is gone, where is he going to go next. This is not a world where
you can just send in your CV, nobody knows you. And it looks
good. You're invited for an interview. And up you go. It's
basically done through patronage, who you know, and the Ottomans
would say that's a better system. Because you're being recommended
by people who have a lot of experience and can tell that you
will do the job in reality, a lot of nepotism and the promotion of
incompetence, and even the history of some of the leadership and its
norms. It's
the appointment of people who have from an academic and even a moral
point of view. We're not necessarily
top drawer.
So he's in this little
village, and come on passions are there who knows him who's the
sheikh, Al Islam offers him another madressa. But it's at 25
silver coins a day, not 30 silver coins a day. And he says no, and
he perseveres in this little mid reset until he finds his next step
up, which is in a place called inner girl, which is also the kind
of inner Ottoman provinces in Bithynia, another 30 objet a day,
job and he moves there.
In 1520, setting the grim dies as a result of this weird complaint,
and Solomon, the first accede to the throne, the son of Ottoman
glory, has truly risen and the Empire becomes unquestionably the
most significant political force in Europe, Africa and Asia. It's a
major political reality in all three of those
continents.
A episode is introduced to the new assault on who is already known.
And they seem to have had
a kind of friendship.
It's difficult in these very kind of formal, bureaucratic
biographies to detect a strong human element. They are
animalistic and formulaic. But friendship existed then as it does
to them. So they might have a few close friends, Ibrahim Pasha, his
Greek Vizio was certainly one of them. They'd play together as, as
boys in the palace as a deterrent. And it was the old offender is
somebody who is also close to the salon man. And that friendship
goes on to create one of the most important political sacral
partnerships in Islamic history maybe even more important than the
connection between Emmanuel Buzzelli. And there's almond milk,
as we will see, so he starts to get better jobs. He's now in the
capital, which is where everybody wants to be. He teaches the double
Pasha madressa He's now on 40 coins a day.
He He's also friends with Mustafa Pasha, who is the first
significant sort of
aid to the new Soloman who gives him a murderous set and then he
gets his key step when he moves to the royal Nether aside the assault
on near madressa in borsa also is important. It used to be the
Ottoman capital before a dealer near many of the royal princes and
princesses are buried there. And it's a very important indication
that you're part of the establishment.
We do detect
in the words of his contemporary contemporaries, some sense of
his impressiveness as a scholar,
that he was known for his quietness and for the stillness of
his demeanor. He will be hugely dignified and hieratic only speak
when was absolutely necessary, never interrupted anybody and
never spoke without considering his words in advance. So then, if
we can go back to this
I thought he offended
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modalities Amanda and Johnny B Sharpie they've
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ILA Sheriff Bulldog Albrook IG Lila, best in a comment Jen filed
in the sheriff as I in a loop. So this is the key moment where he
gets one of the most desirable professorships in the greatest
madrasa in the empire.
Mehmet the conqueror, as I said, wanted to make his new capital, an
intellectual center, and created what was the kind of university
that the eight colleges softness among around his Imperial mosque,
fat, in fact, in Istanbul, and if you go there, you can still see
that the buildings are intact.
Even though during the Attitude Era, they were converted into
nightclubs, and so forth. In one friend of mine went to one of the
nightclubs and one of these mattresses and said in the dome,
somebody had painted Allah JACC Muhammad JACC. There's no God,
there's no Muhammad, which is not quite how Islam works according to
Salafi perspective. But anyway, in the nightclub when you are drunk,
you could look up and see this in a place that had been for
centuries.
Place for Sacred learning. Under the current order in Turkey, some
of those properties are being restituted for Sacred purposes,
but the son was really in the Sunday world, the place to be
greater colleges than anywhere in the Arab world or in north India,
and very much as an imperial foundation. well endowed with lots
of revenues coming in from Alkaff, mainly in the Balkans to sustain
them and to make sure the libraries were good, everything
was cleaned. This students were well cared for, and it was kind of
the Cambridge of the Ottoman Empire. So of these eight
colleges, he is appointed to be the director of the muftis
college.
And as the text says, he stays there for five years where his sun
rises brighter. Now, as you'll recall, what we said about the
mode of preferment in the Ottoman judiciary is that you would be
In the academic world, dealing with students, mastering the
texts, hopefully writing your own commentaries on the text. And by
informal process of peer review, either people would use those
commentaries or they wouldn't.
And then there would be the key step, not obligatory, but people
aspired to aspire to it, where you would leave the madrasa and become
a judge.
And if you were in a top nonetheless, so you'd get a very
significant judge ship.
And you became a judge before you became Mufti. This was the way
they organize things. So Solomon after he spent five years in the
college at the fattier, appoints him to be the Rumeli cause ascot.
In other words, the chief military judge of Romania of the European
provinces, which is the second highest religious post in the
entire empire.
See if we can look at the original hair
character Ruby event the more hideous affendi Uranus soldering
alumni room, when I hire to hire more on all doula Sikhi Synod nzr
it can be bhakti via Kabbalah Froothie or loop Isha, I share I
added separately. For for these years, the rays of the twinkling
glory of His knowledge shone out over the position of being the
distinguished Chief Judge of the ever victorious army of Remaliah,
etc.
His in this person, by this time, just about everybody in the empire
would have heard of him and would have respected him and he is in
this post, as he says, For eight years, which is a fairly long
period, very often Ottoman Judicial Appointments didn't last
very long, partly because it was a matter of changing political
alignments. Patronage people being sacked sometimes for no good
reason, it was never very stable. It was dependent entirely on the
whim of the small town and whoever was whispering in the Sultan's
ears.
But we find that during this time, and I guess this is where the
leadership qualities of a bureaucrat become evident, and he
brings about some important and enduring administrative reforms.
Doesn't sound very exciting, a lot of committee work. And he finds
that the records for the Romanian army are not impressive. And he
also finds that the systems by which
the appointment to chemo Derris positions and Goddess is
a little bit, shall we say, inconsistent, the records aren't
there, the procedures are not standardized. How long should be
the default period of a judge? What should be the staffing in
judgeship of a court of a particular size? How many
candidates could be allowed to be considered to apply for a
particular judgeship show the Ottomans later impose as a result
of his reforms, a cap on the number of people who can apply for
a particular position, they also lay it down that a judge should
not be imposed in a particular city for more than seven years.
These seem to be episodes, innovations, that you have to get
somebody new fresh blood after seven years. And then 1545 And he
reaches the summit of the entire system, and he becomes Scheffel
Islam.
As a result of his effectiveness in organizing the army of Europe.
You have to remember this, again is a time of campaigns, which
means that he's with the Army for a lot of the time so assault on
Solomon, is riding off to Hungary. Border becomes great Islamic city
of Buddhism with this Ortahisar with its madrasahs and if you go
to Budapest, you can still get some sense of what it was like as
a Muslim city, good Ababa, the great bektashi Saint of Budapest
is still there, the turban is still maintained, it somehow
survived the violence of the Inquisition, which the Hapsburgs
brought in when in, if it was 1686, or something the city was
lost in the Dar Al Islam and the population was, was massacred.
But it was an important Ottoman city for a while in majority stone
in ultimate Hungary. But this involved
obviously a lot of legal issues. The army is marching through
different kinds of provinces, soldiers misbehave, what to do
with can't follow
as what to do with soldiers who are gambling with dice what to do
with people who have stolen from legitimate subjects of the assault
on there's a lot of judicial issues that arise. And it's
important because the Ottomans like to maintain absolute
discipline in their army.
The nation generally is travelers who observed the Ottoman armies
marched through Europe were amazed by the kind of machine like
precision with which camp would be struck every morning that march
until noon. The orderliness of it the lack of drunkenness, the fact
that the assault on would always punish anybody who had been
stealing from Christian or Muslim villages, it was rigorous, almost
a monastic
procedure, but three months marching under the campaigning
season, and then marching back again, if you want to know why the
Ottomans didn't continue Europe in the grip of Mad religious wars at
the time, the Reformation, why they didn't capture Vienna and
move on. And if you go to St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna,
they still have the Turkish cannonballs stuck in the roof of
the cathedral.
They were very close. They were in Central Europe, not Eastern Europe
any longer. Basically, it seems to be because the campaigning season
was so short. You need to get your enormous army of 100,000 men with
camels and huge artillery all the way to the gates of Vienna. And
then you'd have to get back again before winter set in. So the
campaigning season as they moved into Europe just got shorter and
shorter until the conquests became more and more difficult.
But if they'd captured Vienna and broken through into Germany, which
is completely prostrate because of the the wars of religion between
the Lutherans and the Catholics, European history would have been
different. But in any case, that was not the divine decree. But
this role as the order of the judicial processes of the army of
Europe. Impressed Selena and so he makes him Scheffel Islam.
This is a post which as I mentioned earlier, has kind of
floated beyond the Muslim memory. We don't think of Sunni Islam as
having a kind of
Grand Mufti of everyone. Everything has become shattered
into Mufti of Egypt in the Mufti of Syria and the Mufti of
wherever.
Australia has a Mufti and it's kind of vague and unclear as to
the authority of these people and the role.
That's a kind of pale, often disappointing shadow of what the
Ottomans were trying to do. So who is the shaker list on and what?
What was his job? It's not a judge's position. It's a muftis
position.
In other words, he is dealing with all of the questions that people
want to raise to the highest possible level in the judiciary.
And there's a huge number of questions a whole lizard, of
people writing, in fact, was so appalling to one of his
contemporaries, episode as Mufti. For decades. After the Sabbath
numbers or the morning prayer would sit down and the factual
questions would come to him and he would dispatch them very
efficiently until he'd finished sometime around the afternoon
prayer every day. Sometimes there would be over 1000 fetters every
day. And each one a major religious, legal responsibility.
Despite their numerosity they will each very important to the
individual suppose I divorced from my wife, can I take this patch of
land it's nobody's nobody's using. I've been paid with bad coin. What
what remedy Do I Have you can imagine a lot of things but not as
judged but as Mufti. In other words, his fatwas don't have any
executive authority that has fatwas. But because of his
closeness to the assault on and the fact that he's fat was so
respected by the Goddess. These are important legal documents. And
we still have some of them, even though kind of they were consigned
to wastepaper, or shortly after being used, but some scholars did
kind of keep them because of episodes status and kind of kept
them in scrapbooks. And we still have some of those. Basically, an
ottoman photo was presented in a fairly standardized form, from the
15th century right up to the 20th century, a very long, thin piece
of paper.
At the top,
who he the divine name, and then a blank space which they call the
space of respect. And then not the Torah, the soul tonic kind of
cipher, but instead formula asking for God's support, and then the
question and then the Mufti is answered. He said,
Nature had to be there. And then afterwards,
something like that the lowest of humanity, which is how the wealthy
would describe himself. And they tend to be in this in this format.
Now, because there's so many of them Aebersold, again, with his
administrative gifts, wants to reduce the amount of work that he
has to do working out people's handwriting or exactly what
somebody is asking, or it's in bad Turkish or whatever. So he builds
up the civil service in the federal office, and appoints a
chief fatwah clock fit for me,
was responsible for making sure that when these documents hit the
mufflers in tray, they're in a format that enables them to be
turned around easily. So the question is carefully formulated.
And it always is always anonymous. It's not I Mustafa, and my wife is
smoking. What right do I have to deal with her and her father is on
her side, not that kind of thing, but instead formulaic. So Zaid and
Hynd have this problem. What is the opinion of the Hanafi jurists
on this? It's always anonymized and standardized. So the more he
can
turn it around quickly.
Whether he actually wrote all of them, or whether his staff were
kind of just asking him to sign something, because the same
question has arisen many times, we don't know. But it is clear that
many of them he did deal with himself.
And in some cases, for instance,
there's a famous one where the factual question comes in the form
of a Persian poem.
An episode takes time out to write his response in the form of
another Persian poem. So you get that kind of
phenomenon. And he is clearly aware of his responsibilities in
this, he doesn't have time in this little piece of paper to give you
all of that Quranic verses in the Hadith. It's not really what a
Mufti does. It's not a detailed tract. If he had it, you're saying
js or all or almost this is legitimate. This is not
legitimate. This is impossible, simple answers like that. And
maybe he'll give an indication of where this is found in one of the
standard Hanafi fatwah texts. So the generation of fatwas is
important, particularly in the Hanafi legal tradition, it's one
of the great genres of Hanafi legal production, they have their
commentaries like Midori, and then the competence on Kadoorie and MFI
nanny, and Marchione produces his own commentary on his own
explanation of Kaduri and it kind of accumulates in crusts with
different commentaries and glosses and super glosses over the years
and episode also writes in that genre. But another important genre
of Hanafi fiqh writing is the reseller, which is a jurist
writing about a particular question. So episode deals with a
question of wiping over boots to prepare for prayer, which if
you're in the army, marching through the snow In, in Croatia or
something is an important issue. So particular issues are dealt
with sometimes in this reseller genre. But the collection of
fatwas is also really important and goes back in the Hanafi
tradition, particularly the fetters of gaudy Han, which is
still used, which is, I think, a 12th century Central Asian
collection of fatwas.
And then, for the Ottomans, an important federal collection was
called the Bezier, which is a mid 15th century collection of updated
Hanafi. That was written by somebody called ebony bazaars, who
was from Crimea. Ottoman Empire was big premiere, still
independent at that time under the gear identity, but it's a Muslim
country. And photography businesses here continue to be an
important source of photos for the for the Hanafi Ottomans. But I'm
also old, even though he doesn't himself, put his photos together
in a single book, there are so respected not just because of his
charisma, but because they're just they just seem to be intuitively
right.
They are collected subsequently and even referred to today. modern
Turkey what was episodes view of Sufi dancing or something? There
it is.
So, these become really important. He's not the chief justice or the
attorney general. In that sense, he is offering his view as to what
is legally correct. And these documents then go to the Sultan or
go to the army heads. Should this Janissary be lashed for stealing a
goat or something that is not Mufti? To put that into practice,
but at least the army officer, Military Police will know what to
do. They're the executive executive on so
they
Mmm. He is a great administrative reformer and is able to turn
around all of these questions
every day.
Normally, they are in Turkish, even though most of the Allamah
are writing in Arabic.
And the fact that they're in fairly straightforward Turkish,
means that they become well known amongst the population, which is
largely Turkish speaking.
Now, I mentioned that even though he's head of the religious
hierarchy, he doesn't have any kind of authority. He's not like
the Pope, who is a temporal Prince, as well as being the head
of the Catholic Church and has his own domains and his sovereign
ruler and a crown. The Schakel Islam is never like that.
The executive where is the executive in Islamic law? This is
the Hanafi is, in particular, an interesting question.
So on the one hand, we tend to think of the Ottoman states as
sort of Oriental despotism, there is the Sultan with his passions,
and His word is law, and everybody else is quaking in their boots.
In reality, in
Hanafy law, it can't be like that. And this is perhaps the most
interesting aspect of what episode is trying to do with the Sharia.
The Turks are inheriting Persian, and also ancient Turkish
traditions of kingship.
They have a whole list of titles,
master of the two seas, blah, blah, servant of the two holy
cities, ha Khan, which is an ancient Turkish title, so they
inherit the mantle of ancient Central Asian, Turkish nomadic
chiefs. But they're also Caesar. Because Constantinople so they're
heirs to the Roman Empire, which the Europeans never accept that
they think is pretty obvious. Romans were Christians and why
Muslims be Caesar's as well as Christians, and inherit the
Persian traditions of statecraft that they've inherited through the
Seljuk tradition in Anatolia with Celtic roots. Administratively,
Islamically, basically being in the Iranian plateau. So the
inheriting all of these different things. But even though many of
those kingly and sole tonic traditions are authoritarian,
particularly those rooted in Roman and Persian precedents, the Sharia
actually insist on something strangely different is one of the
problems that the Ottomans are always contending with. On one
hand, there is the master of the two seas and his amazing palace.
And the rulers of Europe tremble at his name. On the other hand, if
you look in the Hanafi books of Fick, What power does he have?
And it turns out, not a lot.
And this becomes one of the defining tensions of the Ottoman
politics because for the Hanafi consensus, a ruler only does four
things.
Firstly, he establishes the legitimacy of the Friday and the
Eid prayers.
In Islam, that's a subtonic government phenomenon. If the
Sultan has an authorized the Friday prayer in a particular
place, and people just praise her.
And he can retrospectively acknowledge the validity of a
Friday Prayer afterwards, but it really depends on him.
Where you see your Eid prayer, you can't just go out to some field
and do it. It has to be a place designated by this whole time. The
Sultan's name is mentioned as an important part of the hotbar.
That's the the position in the traditional Sunday math hubs. And
ideally, the ruler himself is leading the Friday prayer Well,
that's what happened for a very long time.
If you go to Makkah, now you'll see this enormous Palace and the
king one is in Makkah, supposedly is on the top balcony and
following the Juma for Friday prayers. The old days even King
Fahad used to attend the prayer in the harem, but now they're in this
kind of air conditioned place far away. But Properly speaking, the
rulers should be leading the Friday prayers and giving the
hotbar
with a sword. That's the tradition and even today you see in the
mosques in the Ottoman tradition. There's a lot of kind of political
symbolism the names of the first 4k lifts will almost invariably be
there. There'll be a flag on the minbar which is the kala fulsol,
tonic, ottoman, present and start it's very much a government
expression. And that's one
have the four functions one of the four things that the ruler can and
must do.
function number two of a Muslim ruler is to implement the huddled
in other words, the five sometimes six canonical, non
non negotiable punishments, which are called Anneke. So that's
punishment, Zina for adultery for path which is slanderous
accusations of
adultery, consumption of wine and by extension, other narcotics
theft, Sarika and Hiraga, which is
sort of aggregated highway robbery, that it is for the
assault on to monitor, to police and to punish.
Now, in episodes fetters, we find
that by this time, the Hanafi tradition had acknowledged that
the punishment for adultery was just the kind of rhetorical device
that was never put into practice, because you need for upright, male
eyewitnesses to everything. And in the real world, that doesn't
happen a whole lot. And therefore, you find that the stoning
punishment basically is not actualized in the Ottoman realms
or generally in pre modern Islamic history. Not for modern liberal
liberalizing reasons, but because technically, it's just very, it's
a very old kind of thing. The rules, the evidence are not like
those required anything else in Sharia. Nowadays, of course, some
town in northern Nigeria implement Sharia and the next day, they
found some poor woman stoned to death, but not in pre modern
Islamic times, this was regarded as a kind of statement about the
enormity of violating marriage ties. It's a very western
perspective, it's a very odd, odd kind of law. It's there and it's
fierce, but it's not. It's obviously not really designed to
be done. And it seems anomalous, but the Ottomans recognize this.
And also, interestingly, for sadaqa theft,
the cutting of the hand, again, not for sentimental reasons, the
Ottomans could be brutal when they wanted
that this was generally not applied because of the very
difficult evidentiary rules that Hanafi folk requires. It has to be
deliberately taken out of somebody else's, he is their own
possession, which is defined in a very strange way. And a very
absolute way. According to certain conditions, you have to have a
confession, or you have to have witnesses. In practice, it's been
very difficult to implement that.
I remember when I was living in Saudi Arabia,
everybody was grumbling about the Saudi laws about theft, because
the code is interpretation was that if you left something in your
car, that somebody broke into your car and stole it, that wasn't
theft, because it was visible, therefore it was in a public
space, and wasn't you're taken from your own property. Everybody
isn't. This is completely crazy. But it's known amongst those who
apply traditional Tech's have felt that this is a difficult,
anomalous thing to put into practice. So what Apple swords
does, is to
redefine what we would call theft as a different shadier category of
use of patient or unlawful appropriation.
In other words, it's still theft, as we would understand it, but it
doesn't carry the harsh punishment. It carries a zero
penalty, which is discretionary according to the interpretation of
the judge. So generally, in the Ottoman Empire, if you stole
somebody's donkey, you will be flogged or imprisoned.
So that's another interesting aspect of
the rulers authority. These five penalties are the only area in
which the ruler really has executive authority, but two of
them in practice turned out not to be implemented.
But there's two others, the ruler has the responsibility for the
collection of the supervision and the disbursement of the Zakat.
Again, because of the difficulties of doing that, Muslim rulers have
generally not involved themselves in that,
as a cat has been a private matter, or something at best
locally administered, or determined by families or by
tribes, but the Ottomans never had a central authority it despite the
enormousness of their bureaucracy which tried to look after and
regulate zakat, other taxes, land taxes and things. Sometimes they
did, but not the Zakat.
The fourth was another tax or a levy,
on a booty acquired through conquest, which is important in
the Ottoman context, which is called the hubs. In other words,
of everything which is taken on the field of battle, a fifth has
to go to the government to the assault on. So that's another as a
function of the rulers. But so what we get what Apple sold in
Solomon as they talk together.
So a man is Shadow of God on earth, most powerful man in the
world, his daughters, the richest woman in the world. Extraordinary.
And they're trying to figure out what is the religious basis for
what I'm doing, found themselves up against the Hanafi tradition,
which is actually the ruler is kind of a figurehead and his name
is in the hotbar. And he can tell you where to do the aid prayer,
and maybe he'll help you with your circuit, but in practice in
evidence that is a very odd model.
Islamic law seems to envisage a radically decentralized vision of
society.
There has to be a ruler, this is not anarchism, and the ruler
carries the banner of the Prophet and leads the army into battle.
But even the jihad is considered in the Hanafi folk, not to be the
rulers prerogative, but a collective prerogative of the
believers to be decided upon amongst themselves. That's very
strange in the context of a modern or a pre modern polity. The ruler
can declare war, but it's kind of only because the masses have
endorsed or will endorse what he's doing. And usually that happens to
the the Mufti. The Mufti tells the assault on that is legitimate to
declare war on the Russians or whatever. And that's taken to the
Shetty as view which is taken to be what the masses want, but it's
not a unilateral decision from the top at all.
So a very odd image of Imperial politics totally unlike say the
Habsburg totally unlike the ancient Romans, unlike the
Byzantines, unlike the modern nation state, which likes to
control everything. irony of our modern lives is that it's all
about freedom and rights. But in reality, so much of our life is
regulated by government. We have a national curriculum. Ottomans ever
had anything like that, a Ministry of Health Ottomans ever had
anything like that. So the Ottoman realms tend to present the
spectacle of a radically decentered, sometimes even
centrifugal space,
symbolically, emblematically, religiously united by the person
at the soul time, but in reality, people's lives were very local.
In most cases, the kadhi will be in a small town will be a local
appointment,
the Imam of the mosque, the headman of the village, the head
of the tribe, the head of the religious community, because it
wasn't just Muslims, of course, they will also formally
constituted Armenian, Orthodox and Jewish communities millets in the
Ottoman Empire with a very high degree of autonomy, that will be
impossible in the context of a modern liberal democracy. They
hyperventilated that shady tribunals even though they don't
really clash with British law, which is still
still sovereign, we get very worried about that, in the Ottoman
Empire assault on doesn't get involved in lawmaking, and doesn't
get involved in the making of the Sharia either.
This is something that it's worth bearing this in mind which modern
Muslims have generally forgotten.
So, in Pakistan, for instance, law comes from the government.
There's a council for Islamic ideology that is supposed to make
sure that it's all religiously correct. But in reality, the laws
are decided upon by members of the Parliament, who are appointed by
universal suffrage. So in reality, that means that the ideology of
the state which is supposed to be a religious ideology, and their
footwear choices, and what they do with minorities, and blasphemy and
so forth, is really not decided by the decentralized Sharia, but it's
decided by the electorate.
That's not necessarily a model, that the Islamic Republic of
Pakistan says that that cannot work well. It cannot work well,
and it does not work. Well. Many of the current instabilities in
the Islamic world come from the fact that Muslims have
unconsciously and in a reactively, westernized way tried to adopt the
Western image of the centralized nation state and to turn it into
the Islamic State with an Islamic ideology. That's not the Ottoman
model is not the Islamic model at all, which is radically dissented
system that gives a lot of authority to
Local communities, neighborhoods, religious groups, guilds tariqas.
It's a kind of tapestry of difference. And Catherine Burke,
in her book, the Empire of difference, talks about the
Ottoman Empire and the paradox of this apparently unified state,
with the Sultan as the shadow of God on earth. But in reality, most
people never engage with the government ever. Even if they're
paying taxes, they're paying it to the local bishop or someone who
collected on behalf of the Pasha, then it goes up to the Imperial
bureaucracy. And we need to remember this in our time of
Islamic States. That's not the Islamic model. In any case, back
to episode, he's telling us all time, actually, he's only allowed
to do four things.
Otherwise, the culture just expects him to get on with his
probably quite hedonistic lifestyle in the palace, and not
bother people.
With daily lives, society is self regulating. It looks like some
versions of anarcho syndicalism. In many ways, if you read
Kropotkin, you'll find an image of the state which is a little bit
similar. It's not completely anarchist is still a ruler, there
has to be the possibility of collective self defense, some form
of minimal regulation, but it is more anarchistic than our
stereotype of Oriental despotism.
So one of the key things that the Salton does do in the Ottoman
context that is not really valid in the Hanafi vision is to issue
practical laws, or to confirm laws that are there in provinces before
they've been added to the Empire.
So one of the oddities of the Ottoman Empire is that you have
two legal systems. This the Shetty out.
But there's also something called con on
the shady ad is there in the collections of factors and in
Gadoury, and Murray nanny and the buzz Isiah, but there's this
Colonus books of laws, which exist in order to regulate certain
practical details that you won't find, and the rather idealizing
Hanafy tradition.
What do you really do in cases of
theft, for instance, you have to have laws about property. What do
you do in questions of land tenure, disputes over irrigation
disputes over taxing beehives, there's a whole lot of stuff
necessarily present in the Empire,
which is not that in the Hanafi tradition, and which has to be
extrapolated either through a kind of utilitarian he had, but
generally is regulated by the practice of the ruler in these are
norms. And the Ottomans are inheriting different car loans.
Again, it's very regionally specific. So the rules that they
have for taxing watermills in Bosnia, are a bit different. For
those they have, say, in southern Anatolia, or in Egypt. Over the
years, as they issue more of these rescript, they tend to become a
little bit homogenized. But generally, the Empire is a
patchwork of different kinds of localized laws, which mirrors in
many ways the decentralized nature of Sharia administration.
But this looks like a problem to a lot of the Allamah. God's law
alone is sovereign. What all these cartoons, that's not even a proper
Arabic word. Do we not need to reduce and do away with these
extra judicial things? Even though in practice much of the Empire is
regulated by them, Army regulations and who taxes the
gills and who controls river crossings? And who maintains
security at ports you need? You need rules for those things.
So
episode is troubled by this.
And one of the things in fact, the thing he's most remembered for,
amongst later Ottoman scholars is that he irons out the disparities
between Kondal and Sharia.
And this is one reason why assault on stolen land a magnificent has
his his epithet when the bay is deeded to the Justin Celie Mr.
Grim, Solomon is the law giver. cannone bit like just in you, the
law giver. Well, how does that happen? If he's only got these
four little functions, he's not allowed to issue laws, not allowed
to do anything where they let them go back to his dancing girls or
whatever he spends his time on, but let him not get involved in
important things in the state like law.
So that obviously talking about this, and in his fatwas, you find
for
that episode very often, while he recognizes the ongoing authority
of our lawn irons out certain things that are not Sharia
compliant,
and in other cases, redefines things in ways that makes sense to
the Sharia. So we've already seen how he deals with the fact that
the Hanafi law of theft is not being applied by saying, well, we
didn't call it Celica theft, but we call it illegal expropriation.
And the judge can impose a non huddled penalty on that, and he
does this pretty systematically. The condoms continue. But the
scandal of having a kind of dualistic legal system is
significantly
significantly diminished.
One of the problems that they have in an empire, which is essentially
agrarian, the basis for the wealth of the Empire, and the supply of
personnel for the armed forces from the countryside, is that the
Ottoman system, it's not feudal, in the sense of having an insert
peasantry that just can't leave the land. But it is that is not
clear who actually owns most of the land.
At the lowest level, there is the kind of villager and the
schriftlich, which is the basic farm and schriftlich. It means
like a yoke between two oxen. In other words, the area of land
owned by a peasant is originally defined as the area which you can
plow in a single day makes up the basic unit of demarcation in the
empire and villages will be under the authority of a temporary opt
or a local landowner may be somebody some pasture or Bay,
who's been awarded this, or maybe it owns is owned by a walk, and
the income goes to support one of the big satanic foundations.
But it's not quite clear. who is owning this? Is it the peasant who
owns it? Or is it the landowner who actually has titled to it? So
can he sell it?
He can't really bequeath it, what does the assault on it, and Hanafi
law Islamic law doesn't really allow that you have to have a
clear single owner for immovable property. So I will say the old
redefines this in a very fundamental way,
by saying, Actually, all of these lands are owned by the state that
are owned by the Sultan. And the peasant is a sharecropper, who is
giving a proportion of his harvest to the landowner in exchange for
the right to tilled the land. And the landowner doesn't own it, but
his as it were renting it in exchange for the payment of taxes
to central government. So this irons out the problem of this old
Kanban system that has most of the land in the empire, not all but
most of it cultivated land at any rate, not clearly owned by
anybody. And this is one of the major changes that he makes it it
actually clarifies a lot of things because you want to sell the land
or divide it, it's clear who it belongs to. And you don't need to
engage in protracted negotiations with a lot of people who think
that they have a obscurely defined share in it. So this is important.
And you also finds that the Empire has a lot of localized taxes,
whose role in Sharia is seen as being problematic. So there's
something in Ottoman law called smoke tax, which is what nomads
come down from the mountains and in camp in an area of settled
land. And so the state taxes then for the use of that land, it's not
really there in the hands of Ufuk. There's a tax on gypsy dancers,
for instance, there's taxes on a lot of things, boatman river
crossings.
And these are enshrined in local law in this condo lameness and
episode tries very hard to redefine these as Sharia
institutions. And in order to do this, he has to find an authority
for doing this. And one of the major transformations that happens
in the Ottoman Empire at this time is that the authority the
sovereignty of the Sultan is increased.
The old Hanafi rule which strips the small town of just about every
governmental authority that we would recognize, is modified by
invoking more formally, a certain interpretation of classical
theories of the key Lyford.
If you go to the right Soleimani, a mosque in Istanbul, the
masterwork of it
Ultimate civilization perhaps that's where the shirtless lunch
office used to be in madrasahs and hospitals, it's a huge complex
episode is the one who writes the inscription over the main entrance
to the ceremonial Mosque, which is Exordium have praises for the
Sultan,
but defines him as the Khalifa.
Now, Muslim rulers and often use that in a kind of informal way,
even from the beginnings of the Ottoman period, some of the
Seljuks are saying we're Khalifa it's not a terribly precise term.
But in applesauce hands, it becomes not just a kind of nice
thing to say about the full time but a formal Shediac category that
gives the ruler implicitly more rights than those that are
conventionally allocated to him in the ideal Hanafy system. So that
Khalifa.
And again, this is part of the inscription. In the Sulaymaniyah
is the interpreter and executor of the law of heaven.
Can't remember the original, but that's what it means. Well, even
that, in careful terms, is pushing it a little bit, because the
Khalifa doesn't have a legislative role. But I'm also old is working
hard to try and ensure that all of these laws that are edicts issued
on the authority of government,
are religiously valid. And he does this to this rather intensified
view of who the Khalifa is.
So the category that majority and some early theorists of the
Khilafah recognize, which is that of CSR, through executive
expediency and authority, the ruler, particularly the qlf, can
do certain things can execute certain rebels can punish certain
people can introduce certain structures can build madrasahs for
a particular purpose.
The these become more
institutionalized in the Ottoman context as a natural concomitant
of the rulers charisma.
So it's a very significant inscription and you find similar
things that he writes at the beginning of some of his books
where he's dedicating his book to Soloman, and he gives us rather
from a traditional Hanafy perspective, inflated view of the
authority of the ruler. So this obviously is complex and runs
through much of Ottoman law. But to give you an example, of
contemporary import.
Last week, we were talking about when we all do marriages in the
new Cambridge mosque and for whom, who do we say yes to? Who will we
say no to?
We had two marriages during Ramadan, which I didn't know
people got married during Ramadan, but we did it that seems to be
halal. But do we always require parental consent? Do we always
require that they should bring along the certificate from the
registry office?
And the Turkish imam who we heard who is a learned persons in
Turkey, to do the Nikkor you have to have the official certificate
of marriage first, because that protects the couple in cases of
dispute.
Then English law there's no requirement for a legally
registered marriage as a precondition for a religious
ceremony.
Some backbenchers are trying to change that, which we'll see how
far that get. But in traditional Islamic law, the state doesn't get
involved with things like that. Why is it anything to do with the
Salton or the state bureaucracy to private contract between two
individuals.
But in the context of Abu Saud, that was as a lofty, he's seen so
many cases where nobody can produce any kind of documentation,
maybe a letter, maybe a statement of goods of a dowry or something.
It's a notorious area for disputation
that he actually says that you need to have a document from the
guardi who is ultimately a state appointee in the system.
Otherwise, you're in a state of legal infraction.
So if you've already got your nicotine on it,
you need to have that endorsed by the Guardian, as Accardi has to
endorse it, if it's in the appropriate Sharia form. You can't
say no, you can't marry her. But it's legally notarized. And that's
something relatively new as far as we can tell in Islamic history. So
the current Turkish rule actually goes back to the time of Solomon
At magnificent and the bringing together of salt tonic, and Sharia
and personal law.
So that's one example of the ways in which he does this and a
number of other examples could be cited.
I should mentioned briefly before I close some of his major
writings. It's famous for his fatwas, but
he was quite a distinguished poet
particularly in Arabic,
but his major literary work was his
your shared an Oculus Salim, which is his tafsir
and he found it very frustrating trying to complete this because he
was endlessly interrupted with the state business he found it really
hard to get delta his research as we would say nowadays.
All these committees, the assault on clapping his hands and says the
Mufti will accomplish, accompany me to Albania or something. And he
has to comply, protecting 30 years to write this Tafseer.
But, and the Salton is really anxious to see it.
Selena is afraid that one of them is going to die before it's
completed.
So when it's got to Surah 36, or something
it was sold makes a copy of what he's got and sends it with his son
in law to the palace. Just to kind of reassure this autonomous photon
is delighted and gives them a pay rise,
finishes it
the
next year, which is the year of Solomon's death, and it circulates
and looks at ALMA. And although the prestige of its author, no
doubt gripped many people's attention. It came to be regarded
as one of the three great tough CEOs used amongst learning people
in the Ottoman Empire, along with some luxury, and along with a
doorway. These are the two texts are used in the madrasa primarily
before that, partly because of their strong kind of Hanafi
rationalizing tendencies. But episodes tafsir is right up there.
If you go to book shops in the Arab world now and you look for
books by Ottoman scholars, and partly they just don't know. And
partly it's because the texts are in Turkish, but generally the two
books you will find or maybe the three books you will find will be
* Khalifa is book
on the different disciplines, you will find TASH kaprizov This book,
which I referred to miftah Harada. And you will find the tafsir of
Apple sold
very, very reputed. So he completes this. He writes a few
short, thick books. He writes at they said quite a bit of poetry,
but is essentially
somebody who works on fatwas and works in a practical way in the
judiciary and does so it is still offered Macedonia doing cadastral
surveys quite late in his life, but in his I guess, mid 80s, he
dies 1574
And he's buried at a Europe, which is the quarter of Istanbul, where
the Ashraf and the Allamah are traditionally interred.
And the places well known people can show you where the grave is,
he actually endowed a madrasa there which no longer exists. All
that remains, this is quite humble grave. So
that's the story that I wish to present today and it raises
questions not just of how you remain pious and Sharia oriented
in, in many ways, quite pragmatical Imperial bureaucracy,
but also reminds us of the the surprising decentralization which
the Sharia envisages, if you've read while Halex new book, The
Impossible state. He talks about the eruptions of the modern Muslim
world being about the fact that Muslims are now trying to use the
Western enlightenment structure of the nation state
with its idea that the government monopolizes violence and logging
in order to promote the Sharia, which is structurally completely
allergic to this idea of institutionalizing and govern,
govern mentalization and the result is totalitarian catastrophe
and administrative failure everywhere it's worthwhile book
worth looking at and
I Haluk doesn't look much at Ottoman examples but you
might even see in Apple swords reforms,
which are trying to make the law of the Empire and its huge state
consistent, the beginnings of the modern tendency to make fatwa and
caught up and religious authority, something that the state
regulates, which is a process that's becoming very intense now
with the kind of strict scrutiny of madrasa curriculums and the
banning of independent teaching of Majelis in the mosques, and the
control of the state, not just that the allowing a Friday
prayers, but writing every single hotspot, which is increasingly
common, they tried to do it in Egypt two years ago, the US are
led out to howl of protest and CC back down. But this is the final,
final nail in that coffin in many ways that the Sharia in its
classical text is consensually absolutely clear that the state
has no right to interfere in these things and is perceived as, as, at
best small government.
Now, how you actually instantiate Sharia, in the context of the
inescapable structure of the modern nation state,
international treaties, and so forth, the United Nations is an
interesting question.
It's not clear to me how somebody, Abu Saud would have resolved that,
that this career does remind us of the inherent difficulty of trying
to govern mentalize, Sharia and charismatic authority in Islam,
which is skeptical about central authority and tries to keep its
jurisdiction to a minimum.
So some other unknown one My apologies, but I think he's an
interesting guy an interesting story, and as I said, I've relied
very heavily on Colin embers book so if you want to know more about
this, I would commend it warmly. Saramonic
Cambridge Muslim College, training the next generation of Muslim
thinkers