Rūmī and the Whirling Dervishes

Alberto Fabio Ambrosio

• Publisher: ATF Press Publishing
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN:
  9781925612271
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology

This brings together, in English, for the fi rst time a number of articles in one volume that have been published in various books and journals and are reprinted with permission. Through this work, R?m? and his poetry as well as the whirling dervishes, will hopefully become more widely known in Western countries than they are at present. The whirling dervishes are famous for their ecstatic dance and but here it is hoped that their role within Sufi sm will become more clearly understood. The book is an attempt to suggest a renewed manner of thinking about one of the most celebrated trends in the mystical dimension of the Islam, the religion of love of R?m? and the cosmic dance of the dervishes. The theology is at the back of all the itinerary and the all fi ve chapters represent the possibility to rethink the dynamic relation between disciples and their Founder, institution and charisma, politics and mysticism.

İsmā’īl Rusūhī Ankaravī: An Early Mevlevi Intervention into the Emerging Kadızadeli-Sufi Conflict

İsmā‘īl Rusūhī Anḳaravī is one of the most important shaykhs who lived in Istanbul at the beginning of the seventeenth century. At the time, the Galata Mevlevīhāne where he lived and worked was one of the most influential Sufi sites in the Ottoman capital. On account of his location, which was close to both the European settlements and the Ottoman Court, this tekke was a place where the Mevlevī order could have an impact on both European and Muslim travellers alike.

This contribution aims to present the activities of this shaykh and his role in developing Sufi practice in the seventeenth century. His presence on the political scene discreet at best, and instead he sought, first and foremost, to give spiritual advice to the next generation of Mevlevī devotees.

Sufis and puritanical movements: a time of struggle

Anḳaravī lived in the midst of a struggle between various Sufi groups and the infamous movement of the Ḳāżızādelīs, who were agitating against religious practices they deemed to be deviations from proper Islamic belief and practice (bid‘a).¹ This movement was marked by three periods of heightened activity against Sufi practices from the end of the sixteenth through the beginning of the seventeenth centuries. These three waves, marked by hostile preaching, were grounded in the thought of earlier Islamic scholar such as Ḳāżızāde Meḥmed, the puritanical leader from whom the Ḳāżızādelīs drew their religious and political inspiration.

The stage was set by trials and executions of Sufis considered as marginal, heterodox or dangerous to the political and religious stability of the Ottoman Empire. During the early years of the career of one of the most important and respected jurisprudent of the Ottoman scholarly hierarchy, Ebussu‘ūd Efendi (1490–1574), for instance, Oğlan Şeyh İsmā‘īl Ma‘şūḳī, a shaykh of the Bayrāmī-Melāmī order, was executed in 1529 along with twelve of his followers, based on the judgment of a group of jurisprudents that counted Ebussu‘ūd among its members.² Another prominent Sufi leader, the sheikh Muhyī al-Dīn-i Ḳermānī in Istanbul, was executed in 1550 following a decision issued by Ebussu‘ūd Efendi³, followed by Shaykh Ḥamza’ Bālī, was also decapitated in 1572–73. By this time, Ebussu‘ūd had become the great müfti of the capital in 1545 by order of Sultan Süleymān⁴, and his ruling increasingly challenged excesses that had come to mark some Sufi practices. This Muslim scholar thought that practices, such as Sufi semā‘ ceremonies⁵ and various forms of movement that took place in them, which he defined as ‘dancing’ (raḳṣ), were prohibited by Islamic Law and must be banned. For this reason, he condemned in his fatwas, or formal religious opinions.⁶

A contemporary of Ebussu‘ūd Efendi’s was Birgivī Meḥmed Efendi, who received an Islamic education in the Ottoman schools, and is considered the true inspirator of the movement against sufis.⁷ If Ebussu‘ūd was, at the beginning of his career, in close proximity to the Bayrāmiye milieu, but left it subsequently, Birgivī maintained relations with a Bayrāmī shaykh throughout his life. This evidence suggests that his relation with Sufism was different, even though he stroke what he considered some invalid innovation in the field of the sufi practices too. As matter of fact, Birgivī had a very puritanical interpretation of the Islamic Law that lead him to fight everything was not according to it.

Birgivī instructed his followers by means of a very striking work: the Ṭarīḳat-i Muḥammediye.⁸ Inspired by an approach similar to that of an earlier Muslim thinker and jurisprudent, Ibn Taymiyya (d 1328), the ‘Muḥammadan Path’ laid out by Birgivī is an invitation to the Muslim community to follow a path of virtuous commands. In another of his works, the Maḳāmāt, he also affirms that ‘the Law is a tree, the ṭarīḳa, its branches; the divine knowledge (ma‘rifa) its leaves, and the truth (ḥaḳīḳa) its fruits. If there is no tree, the others are not there either’.⁹

Birgivī, like Ebussu‘ūd, was an active participant in the struggle against Sufi practices, especially semā‘ and raḳṣ. At one point, he reminds his readers of a traditional interpretation of the earlier Muslim scholars, who argued that the Sufi practice of semā‘ and raḳṣ can be associated by analogy with agitated movements and frivolous play (la’b) and for this reason, they are forbidden by the religious law. The inclusion of raḳṣ is the first step toward libertine attitudes and it can pervert the otherwise laudable pronunciation of the name of God. The fatwa of Muḥammad al-Bazzazī (d 1424)—a prominent early Ottoman Hanafi jurist—cited on the authority of Ḳurṭubī is, in the eyes of Birgivī, evidence that raḳṣ was forbidden by the four Islamic law schools. The fact that he followed this fatwa and his treaty on the Path of Muḥammad set up the idea of an Hanbali orientation of Birgivī, even if this is not really the case.¹⁰

The movement that was inspired by Birgivī Meḥmed’s treatise, Ṭarīḳat-i Muḥammediye, came to be picked up by a religious leader by the name of Ḳāżızāde Meḥmed (d 1635), from which the Ḳāżızādelī movement would take its name. Ḳāżızāde Meḥmed would be the figure who would be truly responsible for initiating a political, as well as religious challenge against Sufism in the Ottoman society. Na‘īmā, the great Ottoman historian, defined the events that followed as a division between the people of the Path and the followers of the Ḳāżızādelī agitation’ (Ehl-i ṭarīḳ ve teba‘-i Ḳāżızādeli fitreti).¹¹ The struggle that followed was marked by three major waves of activity.

The first wave was initiated by the aforementioned Şeyh Ḳāżızāde Meḥmed Ṭoğānī Muṣṭafā Efendi. Known as Ḳāżızāde Meḥmed¹², he was born in Balıkesir, probably in 1582. The fact that the father was a jurisprudent explains both his nickname and its use as term to define the entire movement he founded. Ḳāżızāde Meḥmed, after studying with his father, felt under the influence of the Birgivī’s religious works.¹³ In the capital, he also attached himself to the following of Ṭursunzāde ‘Abd Allāh Efendi, who was considered as his mu’īd, or tutor. After completing his education, he began to practice as a preacher (vā‘iz) in different mosques of Istanbul. He was also attracted to the Sufi path after a meeting with the Halvetī shaykh of the Tercumān tekke¹⁴, ‘Ömer Efendi (d 1623), who became his spiritual guide for a time. But the mystical path was not to his liking, so he abandoned it and went back to being a preacher in the mosques of Murād Pāşā, Sultan Selīm, Fātiḥ and Beyazıt. In 1631, he assumed a position of some prominence as the preacher in the prestigious Aya Sofya mosque until his death in 1635 during the campaign of Revān.

In the first part of his treatise named Risāle-i Ḳāżızāde,¹⁵ Ḳāżızāde Meḥmed attacked the legality of the practices of semā‘ and raḳṣ. Moreover, he also attacked a doctrinal opinion that had been issued a century before by a previous Ottoman şeyh’ül-islām, Zenbillī ‘Alī Çelebi (d 1525). In the second part of his work, Ḳāżızāde focused on bid‘a, or “unacceptable innovations/deviations”, that represented what he viewed as the real problem facing the Ottoman Muslim community. The opposition to Ḳāżızāde Meḥmed was embodied by the Halvetī Sufi representative Şeyh ‘Abd’ül-Mecīd Sivāsī Efendi (d 1639). Born in 1563 in Zile near Tokat, he rose to become a prominent shaykh of the Halvetī order.¹⁶ Sivāsī studied the classical Islamic sciences with his uncle, Şems ed-Dīn Aḥmed Sivāsī (d 1597), who also became his spiritual guide Sivāsī, not only f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Acknowledgments
• ‘The Son is the Secret of the Father’: Rûmî, Sultân Veled and the Strategy of Family Feelings
• The Castle of God is the Centre of the Dervish’s Soul
• İsmā’īl Rusūhī Ankaravī: An Early Mevlevi Intervention into the Emerging Kadızadeli-Sufi Conflict
• The Library of the Whirling Dervish: An Editorial Policy
• Boundless Love: Ismā‘īl Anqarawī’s Commentary on the Preface to the Second Book of the Mathnawī
• Bibliography