The “Sunna-minded” Trend 251
the very short duration of beylerbeyi appointments, which forced them to rebel
upon quickly losing their office.70
Kadızade’s chief rival Sivasi was more productive in his rendition of a simi-
larly pessimistic account of the era. He wrote three works that were explicitly
aimed at an imperial audience: Letâ’ifü’l-ezhâr ve lezâ’izü’l-esmâr (“Smart blos-
soms and delightful conversations”, also known as Nesayihü’l-müluk, “Advice
for kings”), Tefsir-i suretü’l-fâtiha (“Commentary on the Sura of Fatiha”), and
Dürer-i ‘aka ’id (“The pearls of the articles of faith”). In Dürer-i ‘aka ’id, written
sometime after 1611, Sivasi described his time as one in which “sedition and
rebellion” (fitne u bugyan) had set in: the common people (avamm-ı halk) be-
lieved whatever they heard, and would rather listen to the “heretics” (melahide,
zenadık) than to “the singing nightingales of the orchard of the heart”. He de-
nounced “the people of innovation” and urged all Muslims to struggle against
them. Not only in the Dürer but also in the preamble to the Tefsir-i Suretü’l-
Fatiha, dedicated to Sultan Osman II (r. 1618–22), he evoked the Quranic in-
junction to “command right and forbid wrong” as the most important duty of
a Muslim ruler.71
While Kadızadeli Mehmed and Sivasi both resorted to the accusation of
bid’a in their condemnation of contemporary practices, the subjects of the ac-
cusation were different. While Kadızadeli Mehmed’s innovators seemed to be
a rather mixed combination of women, Halveti preachers, and sodomites, in
the Letaif Sivasi described his innovators on the basis of a more legal ratio-
nale. In his attacks on the Hamzevis, Idrisis, and Hurufis, Sivasi used the phrase
“people of innovation” as a synonym for “infidels” or “heretics”.72 Yet elsewhere
he noted that there were some innovations that would make their practitio-
ner merely a “person of (blameworthy) innovation” (mübtedi), not a heretic.73
Also worthy of condemnation, according to Sivasi, were Muslim rebels (bagi),
whose killing was lawful, as was that of adulterers and apostates (p. 102). The
way that Sivasi explains the rationale behind it is fairly straightforward. He first
argues that the sultan was not required to perform the obligatory sefer prayers
while en route to the provinces because the provinces were considered his do-
micile, not distant lands of campaign. Therefore, rebelling in the provinces was
like rebelling in the sultan’s own house (p. 104).
70 Öztürk 1981, 43.
71 Terzioğlu 1999, 258–260.
72 Abdülmecid Sivasî, Letâ’ifü’l-ezhâr ve lezâ’izü’l-esmâr (Nesâyih-i Mülûk): Süleymaniye
Ktp., Laleli MS 1613, 40.
73 Terzioğlu 1999, 262.