The “Sunna-minded” Trend 241
was reported to have held the Sufi sheikh in such esteem and intimacy that he
addressed him as “my father”.34
After Sivasi’s death, his disciples, who had taken over many of the city’s
lodges as well as preaching posts, continued to play an important role in the
controversies at least for two decades more. Among them, Sivasi’s nephew
Abdülahad Nuri (d. 1651) was a particularly influential figure and, according
to his disciple and biographer Nazmi Efendi, also the last Sivasi sheikh to have
fought successfully against militant Kadızadelis.35 Abdülahad Nuri witnessed
the reigns of Mehmed III, Ahmed I, Mustafa I, Osman II, Murad IV, İbrahim,
and the first two years of Mehmed IV’s reign. Compared to his master Sivasi,
he was more explicit in his denunciation of the Kadızadelis and called them
“lowly idiots” (ammi eblehler).36
The Sivasi branch did not become a major player in the third and the last
phase of the Kadızadeli wave at least until the 1680s.37 Yet the appearance
of such a relatively complaisant stance should not rule out the existence of
uniquely dissident voices, such as that of Niyazi Misri, who criticized not only
the content of the Kadızadeli message but also the loyalties the Kadızadelis
managed to secure at the highest levels of the Ottoman political establishment.38
With these qualifications in mind, we can proceed to a discussion of how
the Sunna-minded trend shaped Ottoman political thought in the seventeenth
century. Yet one first has to look back at two late sixteenth-century figures,
Münir-i Belgradi and Mehmed Birgivi, who were often mentioned in the writ-
ings of the seventeenth-century authors as the ultimate authorities on the cor-
rect Sunna.
2.1 Münir-i Belgradi and Two Works for Two Distinct Audiences
Known as Münir-i Belgradi, İbrahim b. İskender of Belgrade was one of the
most important figures of Sufi biographical writing in the empire.39 As was
typical of most of the scholars of his generation, Belgradi received training
from Halveti sheikhs, in Sofia and Istanbul, and through a medrese education.
As well as the two works that will be discussed here (Silsiletü’l-mukarrebin ve
menakıbü’l-muttekin and Nisabü-l intisâb ve adabü’l-iktisâb), he wrote on many
34 On Sivasi see Gündoğdu 2000; Terzioğlu 1999, 250–251.
35 Çavuşoğlu 1990, 118ff.; Terzioğlu 1999, 250–251; Nuri – Akkaya 2003.
36 Terzioğlu 1999, 264.
37 Terzioğlu 1999, 251–252.
38 For Mısri’s critique of the entire Köprülü clan, see Terzioğlu 1999, 336–342.
39 Belgradi – Bitiçi 2001, 116; Clayer 2002; Fotić 2005, 59–60.