250 chapter 6
of the rules that regulated non-Muslim behavior in the public sphere, the eth-
ics of the market place, and the taxation and administration of land.
3 Ottoman Decline à la Sunna
The crucial social and intellectual link between Birgivi Mehmed Efendi and
Kadızade Mehmed was constituted through Birgivi’s son Şeyh Fazlullah Efendi
(d. 1622), who was taught by his father in Birgi and came to Istanbul around
1611–12. He served as Friday preacher, first in the Sultan Selim Mosque then
in the Beyazid mosque. In both positions, it was Kadızade Mehmed Efendi
who succeeded him, first in the position in Sultan Selim mosque and later in
Beyazid Mosque following Fazlullah’s death.68 It has been noted that the year
of his second succession (1622–23) also marked a turning point in the dissemi-
nation of Birgivi’s works. In the same year, two copies were made of Birgivi’s
works after four years of silence. What is more remarkable, however, is that
within eight years of Kadızadeli Mehmed taking up his new position as the
preacher of Beyazid Mosque, 26 copies were made of Birgivi’s works on reli-
gious sciences, compared with only 17 that had been produced in the previ-
ous 41 years since Birgivi’s death.69 It must have been Kadızadeli Mehmed’s
preaching, presumably filled with references to Birgivi, which created a de-
mand for Birgivi’s works and mobilized the copyists to reproduce them in in-
creasing quantities.
Although Kadızade Mehmed must have played a crucial role in the intro-
duction of Birgivi’s corpus to a wider audience, the recent association of the
authorship of Tacü’r-Resail with Kadızade Mehmed İlmi instead of Kadızade
Mehmed Efendi renders the examination of the latter’s intellectual world
problematic, since it leaves us without any major treatise penned by Kadızade
Mehmed. Nevertheless, a small portion of Kadızade Mehmed’s account of the
plight of Ottoman society is available in the panegyric poems he wrote for
Murad IV. In a kaside presented to that sultan in 1630, Kadızade Mehmed com-
plained of what he called the disruption of the proper channels of appointment,
the domination of the millet and the influential people by women—whom he
saw as responsible for many kinds of innovations (bid’a)—the engagement of
the notables in wine-drinking and sodomy, the preachers who were mischief-
makers and liars and who transmitted lies and slanders from the pulpits, and
68 Kaylı 2010, 182.
69 Kaylı 2010, 187.