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The route to the top in the Ottoman ilmiye hierarchy of the sixteenth century1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2009

Abdurrahman Atcil
Abdurrahman Atcil*
Affiliation:
The University of Chicago
*
atcil@uchicago.edu
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Abstract

In this essay, I look into the growth in the Ottoman ilmiye hierarchy, and its emergence as a distinct career path, through an analysis of the backgrounds and careers of forty-nine officials who reached the highest four ilmiye positions. The analysis reveals that towards the middle of the sixteenth century new teaching and kadılık offices absorbed the growing number of ilmiye officials. After 1570, limitation of tenure periods and rules for promotion and removal were introduced to facilitate the employment of more officials. Meanwhile, greater emphasis was placed on receiving one's education and obtaining teaching positions in the central cities, especially Istanbul. Those scholars educated and taught in areas distant from the centre lost the opportunity to reach the highest ilmiye posts. In addition, after 1550, the sons of government officials were increasingly favoured in the ilmiye hierarchy.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 72 , Issue 3 , October 2009 , pp. 489 - 512
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 2009

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Footnotes

1

I am grateful to Cornell H. Fleischer for advising and helping me through all stages of this paper. I am also thankful to Azad Amin Sadr and Christopher Markiewicz for their helpful comments.

References

2 This process has been examined in a number of studies: Matuz, Josef, Das Kanzleiwesen Sultan Süleymans des Prächtigen (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1974), 33–45Google Scholar; Fleischer, Cornell H., Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: The Historian Mustafa Ali (1541–1600) (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), 214–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem., “Preliminaries to the study of the Ottoman bureaucracy”, Journal of Turkish Studies 10, 1986, 135–41; idem., “Between the lines: realities of scribal life in the sixteenth century”, in Heywood, Colin and Imber, Colin (eds), Studies in Ottoman History in Honour of Professor V. L. Ménage (Istanbul: The Isis Press, 1994), 45–61Google Scholar; Darling, Linda T., Revenue-Raising and Legitimacy: Tax Collection and Finance Administration in the Ottoman Empire 1560–1660 (Leiden, New York and Cologne: Brill, 1996), 49–67Google Scholar.

3 For a general history of the ilmiye, see Ismail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, , Osmanlı Devletinin İlmiye Teşkilatı (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1965)Google Scholar; for the period to the end of the sixteenth century, Repp, R. C., The Müfti of Istanbul, a Study in the Development of the Ottoman Learned Hierarchy (London: Ithaca Press, 1986)Google Scholar. For a mid-seventeenth-century description of the ilmiye, see “Osmanlı Kanunları”, Milli Tetebbular Mecmuası I (1331/1915). Ali Uğur attempts to describe the seventeenth-century ilmiye in The Ottoman Ulema in the Mid-17th Century: An Analysis of the Vakaiü'l-Fuzala of Mehmed Şeyhi Ef (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1986), xxxvii–xxxxvi. For the seventeenth-century ilmiye biographer Uşşakizade and his work, see Majer, Hans Georg, Vorstudien zur Geschichte der Ilmiye im Osmanischen Reich (Munich: Dr. Rudolf Trofenik, 1978)Google Scholar. For the eighteenth-century ilmiye and religious politics, see Zilfi, Madeline C., The Politics of Piety: the Ottoman Ulema in the Postclassical Age (1600–1800) (Minneapolis, MN: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1988)Google Scholar and idem., “Elite circulation in the Ottoman empire: great Mollas of the eighteenth century”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 26, 1983, 318–64.

4 One of the few studies on kasabat kadıs is Özergin, M. Kemal, “Rumeli Kadılıklarında 1078 Düzenlemesi”, in İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı'ya Armağan, 251–309 (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1976)Google Scholar.

5 The number of mevleviyet kadılıks changed in different periods. As will be shown, some kasabat kadılıks were turned to mevleviyet in the sixteenth century, and this practice continued into the seventeenth. R. C. Repp, The Müfti of Istanbul, 55–8. Ismail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, , Osmanlı Devletinin İlmiye Teşkilatı (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1965), 95–9Google Scholar.

6 For a few examples of the application of the prosopographical approach in Ottoman studies, see Itzkowitz, Norman, “Eighteenth century Ottoman realities”, Studia Islamica 16, 1962, 73–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rifaat Ali Abou-El-Haj, , “The Ottoman Vezir and Paşa households 1683–1703: a preliminary report”, Journal of the American Oriental Society 94, 1974, 438–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kunt, I. Metin, “Ethnic–regional (Cins) solidarity in the seventeenth-century Ottoman establishment”, International Journal of Middle East Studies 5, 1974, 233–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem., The Sultan's Servants: The Transformation of Ottoman Provincial Government, 1550–1650 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983); Faroqhi, Suraiya, “Social mobility among the Ottoman ʿUlema in the late sixteenth century”, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 4, 1973, 204–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and idem., “Civilian society and political power in the Ottoman empire: a report on research in collective biography (1480–1830)”, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 17, 1985, 109–17.

7 Carney, T. F., “Prosopography: payoffs and pitfalls”, Phoenics 27, 1973, 156–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Atayi, Nevizade, Hadaiku'l-Hakaik fi Tekmileti'ş-Şakaik, ed. Özcan, Abdülkadir (Istanbul: Çağrı Yayınları, 1989)Google Scholar. (Hereafter Atayi).

9 Hereafter, unless otherwise noted, I shall use the term “ilmiye” to indicate the hierarchy of officials in the mevleviyet career path.

10 For information about Atayi and his work see Atayi, v–vii; Aslı Niyazioğlu, “Ottoman Sufi sheikhs between this world and the hereafter: a study of Nevizade Atayi's (1583–1635) biographical dictionary”, unpublished PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 2003, esp. pp. 11–20 and 27–86; Repp, The Müfti of Istanbul, 28–9; Ali Uğur, The Ottoman Ulema in the Mid-17th Century, x–xiii.

11 Taşköprizade, Ahmed, Aş-Şaka'iku'n-Nuʿmaniye (Beirut: Daru’l-kitabi’l-ʿArabi, 1975)Google Scholar and Efendi, Mecdi Mehmed, Hadaiku'ş-Şakaik, ed. Özcan, Abdülkadir (Istanbul: Çağrı Yayınları, 1989)Google Scholar.

12 For example, see Efendi, Hadaiku'ş-Şakaik 384–5, 389, 404 and 407.

13 Kefevi Mahmud b. Süleyman, Keta‘ibu Aʿlami'l-Ahyar, Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, Halet Efendi 630.

14 Filiz Kılıç, “Meşaʿirü'ş-Şuʿara: İnceleme, Tenkitli Metin”, unpublished PhD dissertation, Gazi Üniversitesi, 1994.

15 Çelebi, Aşık, Zeylu'ş-Şaka'iki'n-Nuʿmaniyye (Cairo: Daru'l-Hidaye, 2007)Google Scholar.

16 I treat the sultan's tutor together with the highest-grade ilmiye members, şeyhulislam, kadıasker and kadı of Istanbul, because the sultan was sufficiently powerful to intervene in the affairs of the ilmiye.

17 For an article about patronage and family relationships in the ilmiye in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, see Faroqhi, “Social mobility”.

18 Of the pre-1550 initiates, seven officials – Ebussuud Efendi, Samsunizade Ahmet, Muallimzade Ahmet, Muhaşşi Sinan, Hamit Efendi, Abdülkadir Şeyhi and Şah Mehmet – married the daughters or grand-daughters of high-level ilmiye members or the sultan's tutor. As for those who pursued an ilmiye career after 1550, seven – Kafzade Feyzullah, Çivizade Mehmet, Malulzade Mehmet, Sinanefendizade Ali, Bahaüddinzade Abdullah and Ebulmeyamin Mustafa – married daughters of other high-level ilmiye officials. Damat Efendi, about whose father or other relatives there is no information in Atayi, married the intimate of sultan Raziye Hatun.

19 In the case of Hubbi Mollası, Mirza Mahdum, Kuş Yahya and Hoca Sadettin, hierarchical rules seem to have been overlooked thanks to their patrons.

20 Repp, The Müfti of Istanbul, 51–5 and Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Devletinin İlmiye Teşkilatı, 45–53.

21 Atayi, 184.

22 Ibid., 292.

23 Ibid., 248.

24 Ibid., 186.

25 Ibid., 165.

26 Ibid., 435.

27 The Kanunname of 1598 expresses the displeasure of the administration at the issuance of mulazemet to those who had not served a high dignitary. Apparently, some people saw the loophole in the practice of granting mulazemet to prayer leaders in some departments of the palace. The document reads: “These positions traditionally provided five or six mulazemets. However, in the last nevbet, 140 students received mulazemet through these positions”. The same document points out another loophole in mulazemet practice: “There are some medreses in the far-away regions … some foreigners, [who do not hold mulazemet] were given these medreses. Afterwards, they infiltrated the system and acquired the high positions”. The document asks kadıasker of Rumeli to prevent these people from entering the ilmiye. “İlmiyye Kanunnamesi”, in Ahmet Akgündüz, Osmanlı Kanunnameleri ve Hukuki Tahlilleri, vol. 8, 634–5 (Istanbul: Fey Vakfı, 1990).

28 Atayi, 129–32. Repp also mentions the career of Bostan Efendi to show the relationship between kasabat kadılık and mevleviyet career paths. Repp, The Müfti of Istanbul, 57.

29 Peirce, Leslie P., The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 91–103Google Scholar. Peirce shows that after the 1550s, women of the dynasty were no longer allowed to leave Istanbul for the provinces with their sons, and only eldest princes were allowed to rule in the provinces. By the early seventeenth century the practice of provincial service for princes had completely died and the eldest member of the dynasty was recognized as heir to the throne. For an account of the execution of the princes Mustafa and Bayezit and associated events, see Turan, Şerafettin, Kanuni'nin Oğlu Şehzade Bayezid Vakası (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1961)Google Scholar.

30 These are Süleymaniye Darulhadisi and the medreses of Süleymaniye, Ayasofya, Şehzade, Valide-i Atik, Valide-i Cedid, Sultan Selim I and Vefa.

31 These are the medreses of Sultan Bayezit II and Sultan Selim II.

32 These are Hoca Sadettin, Hamit Efendi, Samsunizade Ahmet, Hubbi Mollası and Mirza Mahdum.

33 Muhaşşi Sinan, Kadızade Şemsettin, Zekeriyya Efendi, Abdülkerim Salih, Abdülkadir Şeyhi, Karaçelebizade Hüsamettin, Çivizade Mehmet and Ahizade Mehmet taught in one of these medreses when they were removed from a kadıaskerlik.

34 From the officials in the group, Kemal Efendi, Damat Efendi and Kethüda Mustafa were assigned small kadılıks as an additional benefit.

41 In the previous period, the officials could be given the kadılıks of Mecca and Medina as an interim job before the next promotion.

42 For an interpretation of the use of rotation as a means of control by the government in the Ottoman Empire, see Barkey, Karen, “In different times: scheduling and social control in the Ottoman Empire, 1550 to 1650”, Comparative Studies in Society and History 38/3, 1996CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 460–83.

43 It must be mentioned that Hubbi Mollasi and Mirza Mahdum followed a fairly different kadılık path to the kadıaskerliks.

44 Repp, The Müfti of Istanbul. Repp gives a detailed history of the office from its inception as a fairly independent religious position in the fifteenth century to its becoming a government office with a higher salary and more prerogatives, but less independence, in the sixteenth.

45 Muallimzade Ahmet, Cafer Efendi, Defterdarzade Ali, Mirza Mahdum and Hamit Efendi served as muftis in small towns. Only Hamit Efendi became şeyhulislam later in his career.