120 chapter 3
addressed to the new ruler, Selim II, exhorting him to follow the precepts of
the Sharia strictly and, particularly, to abolish the Ebussu’udic distortions of
the Sharia in land tenure and taxation.58
In modern scholarship, Birgivi’s name has become synonymous with
Ottoman fundamentalism, representing the kind of zealot who condemned
every innovation and argued for complete adherence to the Sharia.59 This
image, as will also be seen in chapter 6, was much influenced by Birgivi’s
association with the seventeenth-century Kadızadeli movement, as well as
the misattribution to him of several polemical works against innovations by
the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century scholar Ahmed al-Rumi
al-Akhisari.60 The influence of Ibn Taymiyya on the latter, in particular, has led
many scholars to consider Birgivi a follower of Ibn Taymiyya as well, which is
not the case: similarly uncompromising and strict as he may have been, Birgivi
seems to have totally ignored Ibn Taymiyya’s work, which during this period
was mostly (and paradoxically) used by Ebussu’udic scholarship, as was seen
in Dede Cöngi’s case.61 Birgivi’s precursors should instead be found in Şehzade
Korkud’s treatises, and to a lesser degree in his own more or less contemporary
“decline” literature (of which more in chapter 4). As Katharina Ivanyi remarks,
Birgivi seems62
a scholar immersed in “cases,” ... rather than one concerned with “legal
norms” ... he was concerned with concrete and hands-on advice on prob-
lems of everyday concern (rather than with what he would have consid-
ered abstract theorizing and high-brow conjecture).One is tempted to correlate this remark with the general trend of Birgivi’s con-
temporary and subsequent political thinkers (as will be seen below) to neglect
the Tusi-styled quest for a philosophical foundation of society and politics in
favor of more concrete and down-to-earth advice on specific institutions.
His polemical treatises against Ebussu’ud apart, Birgivi’s main and most
popular work remains al-Tarîqa al-Muhammadiyya.63 It is divided into three
58 Ivanyi 2012, 43–45.
59 We will skip the very interesting discussion of whether he should be considered a precur-
sor of the “Islamic Enlightenment” or “Puritanism” (Schulze 1996; Hagen – Seidenstricker
1998, 95ff.; Ivanyi 2012, 5–7), as it would necessitate a long digression from our subject.
60 On these works see Ivanyi 2012, 36–40; Sheikh 2016.
61 Radtke 2002; Ivanyi 2012, 79–82.
62 Ivanyi 2012, 72.
63 The most recent and comprehensive study of this important work is Ivanyi 2012. Radtke
2002, 161–170 gives a short synopsis and a detailed report of the sources used by Birgivi.