The “Sunna-minded” Trend 239
of office and Vani’s arrival in Istanbul, the central government was issuing or-
ders prohibiting the sale of tobacco, coffee, alcoholic drinks, and other means
of “illicit” amusement, as well as calling for vigilance against the mixing of the
sexes outside family circles.25 In line with the spirit of the times, the mufti
Minkarizade Yahya issued a fetva against devran, to be followed by a longer one
against the devran of the Sufis and the Mevlevi sema. In 1670–71, it was decreed
that all taverns had to be torn down. One of the most controversial measures
that was believed to have been inspired by such Kadızadeli “vigilance” took
place in 1681, when the kazasker of Rumili Beyazızade Ahmed Efendi (1634–87)
declared death by public stoning (recm) to be the appropriate punishment for
a married Muslim woman accused of adultery with a Jewish man. The punish-
ment was carried out in the middle of the At Meydanı in Istanbul.26 This was
the first incident of public stoning in the Ottoman capital and aroused much
criticism, yet it also showed the authorities’ firm backing of the application of
the Sharia.
In 1683, when the ambitions of the grand vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha to con-
quer Vienna were quashed, the entire Köprülüzade clan was forced to resign
from their posts. A counselor to Kara Mustafa Pasha, Vani Efendi was left in the
lurch without his protection.27 Shortly after this change in government, there
also took place a definite shift in official policy towards the Sufi orders, and
influential Halveti and other sheikhs were received favorably at Mehmed IV’s
court.28 Subsequently, in 1687, the government put a tax on tobacco and thus
legalized it.
2 Beyond the Social History of the Controversy
Although this narrative neatly summarizes how the Kadızadelis polarized
the Ottoman public in the seventeenth century, it also draws a very simplistic
picture of the main targets of Kadızadeli vigilance and represents them as a
homogenous “Sufi lot”. While Sufi practices do seem to have preoccupied the
Kadızadelis during this period, there was by no means a united social or ideo-
logical “Sufi” front in the reactions to the Kadızadelis.
25 Terzioğlu 1999, 106.
26 Defterdar – Özcan 1995, 114–115; Silahdar – Refik 1928, 1:731; Terzioğlu 1999, 173.
27 Terzioğlu 1999, 173, 174.
28 For the Mevlevi influence at Mehmed IV’s court, see Terzioğlu 1999, 174 and Baer 2008,
69–70.