236 chapter 6
mufti Ebussu’ud (in office 1545–73) over cash endowments, which involved
usury—prohibited by Islamic law but, as seen in chapter 3, rationalized on the
basis of customary practice and the public good. Kâtib Çelebi’s Mîzânü’l-hakk
fi’l-ihtiyâri’l-ahakk (see below, chapter 7) serves as an index of the practices
whose permissibility was challenged by the Kadızadelis.10 Among the most
controversial were visiting tombs, using music and dance in Sufi ceremonies,
drinking coffee, the existence of coffeehouses, the consumption of tobacco,
and communal performances of supererogatory prayers on the nights of
Regaib, Berat, and Kadir.
Here, a short outline of the Kadızadeli movement will be given, which
should be read against the other political developments of the seventeenth
century that are described at the beginning of chapters 5 and 7. The first pro-
tagonist of the seventeenth-century Salafist upsurge in the capital, Kadızade
Mehmed, came from Balıkesir and arrived in Istanbul sometime before 1622.
By 1633, he had gained the attention of Murad IV, who frequented the mosque
where he preached to listen to his sermons and so invited him to the palace.11
Murad IV wanted to control the increasingly unruly janissaries and the cavalry
regiments in the capital and the Kadızadelis’ anti-innovation ideology served
as a good pretext to get rid of the coffeehouses where the disobedient elements
usually congregated.12
Kadızade Mehmed Efendi was given extra doctrinal credit in contem-
poraneous scholarship for producing an expanded translation of Siyasat al-
Shariyya, by the Hanbali scholar Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), who was regarded as
one of the strictest authorities in Islamic legal thought. The work is entitled
Tâcü’r-resâ’il ve minhacü’l-vesâ’il (“The crown of the epistles and the way of
[proper] causes”). However, its authorship has convincingly been disputed,
and the most recent conclusion is that it was penned not by Kadızade Mehmed
but by a Halveti sheikh by the same name, Kadızade Mehmed İlmi (d. 1631/2),
who also wrote two nasihatnames for Murad IV.13
The chronicles are silent about Kadızadeli activism during the reign of
Ibrahim I (1640–48). However, following the accession of Mehmed IV to the
throne in 1648, the second Kadızadeli wave began to affect the capital. The
most prominent leader of the Kadızadeli clique at this time, Üstüvani Mehmed
Efendi, had many followers, especially among the personnel of the palace, in-
cluding the gardeners (bostancı), halberdiers (baltacı), gatekeepers (kapucıs),
10 Kâtib Çelebi 1888/89; Kâtib Chelebi – Lewis 1957.
11 Terzioğlu 1999, 194.
12 Terzioğlu 1999, 201.
13 See Terzioğlu 2007.