Islamic Literature and Intellectual Life in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century Anatolia

424 Pages·2016·7.14 MB·English

by  Andrew C. S. Peacock (ed)

Islamic Literature and Intellectual Life
in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century Anatolia
ISTANBULER TEXTE UND STUDIEN

HERAUSGEGEBEN VOM
ORIENT-INSTITUT ISTANBUL

BAND 34
Islamic Literature and Intellectual Life
in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century Anatolia

Edited by
A.C.S. Peacock
Sara Nur Yıldız
WÜRZBU RG 2016

ERGON VERLAG WÜRZBURG
IN KOMMISSION
Umschlaggestaltung: Taline Yozgatian

Cover Image: Depiction of Alexander the Great (İskander-i Ẕū’l-Ḳarneyn) in Ahmedi’s İskender-
nāme, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS. ancien fonds turc 309, fol. 149b, copied in Amasya in
819/1416 by Muhammed b. Mevlana Pir Hüseyin, known as Hacı Baba el-Sivasi.

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ISBN 978-3-95650-157-9
ISSN 1863-9461

© 2016 Orient-Institut Istanbul (Max Weber Stiftung)
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Table of Contents
List of Figures and Tables........................................................................................7
Notes on Contributors............................................................................................9
Acknowledgements................................................................................................13
Abbreviations.........................................................................................................15
Note on Transliteration and Usage.......................................................................17
Chapter 1.
A.C.S. Peacock and Sara Nur Yıldız
Introduction.
Literature, Language and History in Late Medieval Anatolia..............................19
Part I. Sufis, Texts and Religious Landscapes of Anatolia
Chapter 2.
Bruno De Nicola
The Fusṭāṭ al-ʿAdāla:
A Unique Manuscript on the Religious Landscape
of Medieval Anatolia.............................................................................................49
Chapter 3.
Zeynep Oktay
Layers of Mystical Meaning and Social Context
in the Works of Kaygusuz Abdal...........................................................................73
Chapter 4.
A.C.S. Peacock
Metaphysics and Rulership in Late Fourteenth-Century
Central Anatolia:
Qadi Burhān al-Dīn of Sivas and his Iksīr al-Saʿādāt..........................................101
Chapter 5.
İlker Evrim Binbaş
Did the Hurufis Mint Coins?
Articulation of Sacral Kingship in an Aqquyunlu Coin Hoard
from Erzincan......................................................................................................137
6 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Part II. Literature and Court Culture
Chapter 6.
Selim S. Kuru
Portrait of a Shaykh as Author in Fourteenth-Century Anatolia:
Gülşehri and His Falaknāma................................................................................173
Chapter 7.
Sara Nur Yıldız
Aydınid Court Literature in the Formation of an Islamic Identity
in Fourteenth-Century Western Anatolia...........................................................197
Chapter 8.
Dimitri Kastritsis
The Alexander Romance and the Rise of the Ottoman Empire........................243
Chapter 9.
Şevket Küçükhüseyin
The Ottoman Historical Section of Ahmedi’s İskendernāme:
An Alternative Reading in the Light of the
Author’s Personal Circumstances........................................................................285
Part III. Mobility, Networks and Patrons
Chapter 10.
Abdurrahman Atçıl
Mobility of Scholars and Formation of
a Self-Sustaining Scholarly System in the Lands of Rūm
during the Fifteenth Century..............................................................................315
Chapter 11.
Jonathan Brack
Was Ede Bali a Wafāʾī Shaykh?
Sufis, Sayyids and Genealogical Creativity
in the Early Ottoman World...............................................................................333
Chapter 12.
Scott Trigg
Optics and Geography in the Astronomical Commentaries
of Fatḥallāh al-Shirwānī.......................................................................................361
Chapter 13.
Sooyong Kim
Literary Culture in Fifteenth-Century Kütahya:
A Preliminary Assessment...................................................................................383
Index.....................................................................................................................401
List of Figures and Tables
Figure 1.1: Map of Anatolia in the beylik period.............................................24
Figure 2.1: Fusṭāṭ al-ʿAdāla fī Qawāʿid al-Salṭana, Bibliothèque
Nationale de France, MS Supplement Turc 1120, fol. 69a,
showing date of copying................................................................52
Figure 4.1: Qadi Burhān al-Dīn of Sivas, Iksīr al-Saʿādāt
fī Asrār al-ʿIbādāt. Istanbul, Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi,
MS Aya Sofya 1658, fol. 1a, title folio........................................104
Figure 4.2: Qadi Burhān al-Dīn of Sivas, Iksīr al-Saʿādāt
fī Asrār al-ʿIbādāt. Istanbul, Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi,
MS Aya Sofya 1658, fol. 1b-2a showing the opening
of the work...................................................................................105
Figure 4.3: Qadi Burhān al-Dīn of Sivas, Iksīr al-Saʿādāt
fī Asrār al-ʿIbādāt. Bursa, İnebey Yazma Eserler
Kütüphanesi, MS Hüseyin Çelebi 500, fol. IIa,
title folio.......................................................................................106
Figure 4.4: Majmūʿa in the hand of Yār ʿAlī Divrīkī, Bursa,
İnebey Yazma Eserler Kütüphanesi, MS Hüseyin
Çelebi 1183. Opening folio.........................................................120
Figure 4.5: Copy of Suhrawardī Maqtūl’s Partawnāma in the hand
of Yār ʿAlī Divrīkī, from his personal majmūʿa, Bursa,
İnebey Yazma Eserler Kütüphanesi, MS Hüseyin
Çelebi 1183, fol. 26b....................................................................129
Figure 5.1: The sentence ḥarf li’llāh on both sides of the coin.
Type A-I, No. 1 (Sadberk Hanım Müzesi, Istanbul,
no 17350) .....................................................................................141
Figure 5.2: Type C-IX, No. 129 (Sadberk Hanım Müzesi, Istanbul,
no 17478) .....................................................................................151
Figure 5.3: Jaʿfar’s coin with the inscription Her bir ḳalb diyende
yüsera aġçası / baġçası (Sadberk Hanım Müzesi, no 17491) ........153
Figure 7.1: Tire Miscellany: praise of the Aydınid ruler Fahrüddin
İsa in ʿImād b. Masʿūd al-Samarqandī’s Arabic
Introduction (Tire, Necip Paşa Kütüphanesi, MS DV 812,
fol. 1b-2a) ....................................................................................219
Figure 7.2: Tire Miscellany: A panegyric Persian qaṣīda in honour
of the Aydınid ruler, Fahrüddin İsa, with a description
of Bozdağı Mountain (line 4 ff.) (Tire, Necip Paşa
Kütüphanesi, MS DV 812, fol. 15b-16a) ....................................220
8 LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES
Figure 7.3: Tire Miscellany: Arabic aphoristic verse selections
from ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib and Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī with
interlineal Persian translations (Tire, Necip Paşa
Kütüphanesi, MS DV 812, fol. 51b-52a) ....................................221
Figure 7.4: Aydınid literary patronage...................................................232–234
Figure 10.1: Madrasas built in the lands of Rūm from the
thirteenth to the fifteenth century...............................................318
Figure 10.2: Madrasas of royal prestige built in the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries in the lands of Rūm.......................328–329
Figure 11.1: The Badrī-Wafāʾī family tree........................................................341
Figure 11.2: From Ḥayāt al-Dīn to Seyyid Vilayet..........................................350
Figure 11.3: Abū al-Wafāʾ and Ḥayāt al-Dīn...................................................352
Figure 12.1: Longitude and latitude coordinates for places
mentioned in Fatḥallāh Shirwānī’s ḥāshiya..........................376–379
Notes on Contributors
Abdurrahman Atçıl holds a PhD from the University of Chicago and is
currently Assistant Professor of History and Islamic studies at İstanbul Şehir Uni-
versity. His book Defenders of Faith and Empire is forthcoming from Cambridge
University Press. He is the editor of Divan: Disiplinlerarası Çalışmalar Dergisi.
İlker Evrim Binbaş is Lecturer for Early Modern Asian Empires at Royal
Holloway, University of London. His research interests include intellectual net-
works, Islamicate historiography and political thought in late medieval and early
modern periods. His publications include articles on the history of the genealogi-
cal tree and Timurid history and historiography. His forthcoming book on
Timurid intellectual networks entitled Intellectual Networks in Timurid Iran: Sharaf
al-Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī and the Islamicate Republic of Letters will be published by Cam-
bridge University Press.
Jonathan Brack is a PhD candidate at the Department of History, the Uni-
versity of Michigan. He received an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from the He-
brew University of Jerusalem. His dissertation research focuses on the politics of
sacred kingship and conversion in Mongol ruled Iran. He has published an article
entitled “A Mongol Princess Making Hajj: The Biography of El Qutlugh, Daugh-
ter of Abagha Ilkhan (r. 1265-82),” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 3rd series, 21
(2011).
Bruno De Nicola is Research Fellow in Middle Eastern Studies in the
School of History, University of St Andrews, UK. His publications include “The
Ladies of Rūm: A Hagiographic View on Women in 13th and 14th Century Ana-
tolia,” Journal of Sufi Studies (2014) and “Patrons or Murids? Mongol Women and
Shaykhs in Ilkhanid Iran and Anatolia,” Iran 52 (2014). He is coeditor of Knowl-
edge and Language in Middle Eastern Societies (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Pub-
lishing, 2010); Islam and Christianity in Medieval Anatolia (Farnham: Ashgate,
2015).
Dimitri J. Kastritsis is Lecturer in Ottoman History at the University of St
Andrews. His interests focus on the political and intellectual culture of the early
Ottoman and late medieval Mediterranean world. He is especially interested in
historical and quasi-historical texts and narratives. His publications include The
Sons of Bayezid (Leiden: Brill, 2007) and “The Trebizond Alexander Romance: The
Ottoman Fate of a Fourteenth-century Illustrated Byzantine Manuscript,” Journal
of Turkish Studies 36 (2011): 103–131.
Sooyong Kim is Assistant Professor in the English Language and Compara-
tive Literature Department at Koç University, Istanbul. He has recently published
a co-translation of selections from Evliya Çelebi’s Book of Travels, and is currently
10 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
finishing a book on the formation of an Ottoman literary canon in the sixteenth
century. His research interests include both premodern and modern literatures of
the Middle East.
Şevket Kücükhüseyin is a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Is-
lamic-Religious Studies at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. He has been act-
ing professor for Islamic Studies at the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies
of the University of Halle (Saale) since winter semester 2014-15. His major publi-
cation is Selbst- und Fremdwahrnehmung im Prozess kultureller Transformation. Anato-
lische Quellen über Muslime, Christen und Türken (13.-16. Jahrhundert) (Vienna: Aus-
trian Academy of Sciences, 2011).
Selim S. Kuru is Associate Professor at the University of Washington, Seattle,
WA. Kuru’s work focuses on Anatolian literary history, in the fourteenth to six-
teenth centuries, and genres dealing with the topic of love and its place in the
elite Ottoman society. His recent publications include a chapter in The Cambridge
History of Turkey, Vol. 2 on Anatolian Turkish Literature during the period 1453-
1600 and another chapter on homoeroticism in Anatolian elite literary traditions
which is published in Italian.
Zeynep Oktay is Research Fellow in Middle Eastern Studies in the School of
History, University of St Andrews. She also teaches Turkish literature at Boğaziçi
University, Istanbul and is completing a doctorate at Sorbonne University École
Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, France on “The Abdâlân-ı Rûm and the
Foundations of Bektashi Thought and Aesthetic.” Her publications include Mes-
nevî-i Baba Kaygusuz: İnceleme, Tenkitli Metin ve Tıpkı Basım (Harvard University
Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures, 2014).
A.C.S. Peacock is Reader in Middle Eastern Studies in the School of History,
University of St Andrews and has published widely on medieval Islamic history
and literature, especially with regard to Anatolia. Principal publications include
Early Seljūq History: A New Interpretation (London: Routledge, 2010); The Great Sel-
juk Empire (Edinburgh University Press, 2015). He is editor (with Sara Nur Yıldız)
of The Seljuks of Anatolia: Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East (London: IB
Tauris, 2013) and (with Bruno De Nicola and Sara Nur Yıldız) of Islam and Chris-
tianity in Medieval Anatolia (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015). He is Principal Investigator
of the European Research Council-funded research project “The Islamisation of
Anatolia, c. 1100-1500.”
Scott Trigg is a dissertator in the Joint PhD Program in History and the His-
tory of Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he is finishing his
dissertation on post-Classical Islamic science and the intellectual career of
Fatḥallāh al-Shirwānī. He was a Fellow at the CASA Program at the American
University in Cairo and the 2014-2015 Coleman Dissertation Fellow at the Insti-
tute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.