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of public affairs under the law of God, may be called God’s elect for the
caliphate; moreover, he stressed the nobility of the Ottomans’ lineage, indi-
rectly qualifying them for the designation of caliphs. While he refuted Shah
Ismail’s claims to descent from the Prophet, he was careful not to touch this
subject as far as it concerned the Ottomans.37 Fifteen years later, in 1529, writ-
ing a universal “History of the caliphs” for Ibrahim Pasha, Hüseyin b. Hasan
al-Semerkandi impressively began the story of the Ottoman caliphate with
Selim I, thereby showing that the latter was the heir of the caliphal lineage
from the Mamluks by conquest.38 Perhaps in the same vein and around
the same period, Abdüsselam b. Şükrullah el-Amasi described the office of the
imam and noted that he is the same as the caliph, substituting the Prophet
in guiding the people in both religious and secular affairs (din ve dünyada).
There are three ways for the imam to be chosen: appointment by the previous
imam, a collective decision by the notables (ehl-i ray ve sahib-i tedbir) upon the
death of the previous imam, and an appropriate person conquering the land
with his army following the death of the previous imam. After designating the
prerequisites for a person to become imam, stressing the value of knowledge,
the author states that the present imam is Sultan Süleyman; one might suggest
that what is implied is also succession by conquest.39
Unlike Bitlisi, the issue of descent was exactly what the ex-grand vizier
Lütfi Pasha chose to tackle in 1554, probably hoping to gain Süleyman’s favor
again, in a treatise entitled Halâs al-umma f î ma ’rifat al-a ’imma (“Deliverance
of the community on the knowledge of the imams”).40 Lütfi Pasha begins by
praising Süleyman as “the Imam of the Age” who “has maintained the Shar’î
laws in order and reformed the ‘urfî dîwâns”. His aim was to refute the argu-
ments of those who maintained that a legitimate caliph should come from the
tribe of Quraysh, i.e. have a blood relationship with the Prophet and his fam-
ily. Presumably this had been a matter of debate at the time: Lütfi claims that
he was asked the question by “certain of the noblest of the aşrâf ”. He quotes
extensively from various collections of fetvas and hadiths, to the effect that:
37 Sönmez 2012, 139–162. Bitlisi also used regularly the term caliph for the Ottoman sultan in
his Heşt Bihist: Bitlisi – Başaran 2000, 139 and passim.
38 Yılmaz 2005, 70; Kavak 2012, 98. It is to be noted that Semerkandi did not succumb to the
Messianic literature revolving around Süleyman and Ibrahim at this time, since he reas-
sures the reader that the End of Days is to come several centuries in the future.
39 Amasi – Coşar 2012, 140–145.
40 The treatise was partially translated in Lütfî Pasha – Gibb 1962; cf. Ocak 1988, 173–174;
Fazlıoğlu 2003, 387–389.