The “Sunna-minded” Trend 253
career in the Ottoman bureaucracy, Sarı Abdullah Efendi was also one of the
most renowned Sufi intellectuals of his time and left behind a large corpus of
works ranging from commentaries on the Mesnevi to conversations on the fun-
damental pillars of religious belief.77 In this work, Sarı Abdullah wrote a long
discussion about who is responsible for imposing ihtisab, or public morality,
and asked whether ihtisab could be carried out, without the permission of the
imam, by persons other than the imam. Sarı Abdullah informed his readers
that the ulema assigned different degrees to commanding right and forbidding
wrong.78 At one end, there were those actions that can be met with simple
mercy and compassion, the disciplining of which did not need the sultan’s
confirmation. At the other, there were the actions that can only be deterred
by siyaset and punishment (ukubet), the exercise of which is exclusive to the
sultan because if everyone dared to carry them out it would be a source of sedi-
tion (fitne) in the society. Against these actions, only the sultan was authorized
to carry out ihtisab.
3.1 Fighting Innovation through Consultation
One theme common in the works studied in this chapter is the necessity of
consultation as a means of imposing the Sharia and eradicating innovation.
In the same kaside that Kadızade Mehmed submitted to Murad IV, he warned
the sultan about his duties to God and his responsibilities to his subjects. He
implored him to follow the Qur’an and the Sunna in order to eradicate inno-
vation. He also urged him to hold an ayak divanı as had been the practice of
previous rulers. Unless the sultan fulfilled his responsibilities to his people,
Kadızade warned him that he was going to account for his actions in the
political elites of the capital. For example, two of the highest-ranking officials, the chief
mufti Paşmakçızade Seyyid Ali Efendi (d. 1124/1714) and the grand vizier Şehid Ali Pasha
(d. 1716, vizier 1713–1716) were identified as the two leading Melami-Bayramis of the
period.
77 Sarı Abdullah Efendi was a member of Grand Vizier Halil Pasha’s (d. 1629) retinue as his
ink bearer and personal secretary. Later on he was appointed chief scribe during the east-
ern campaign against the rebellious Abaza Pasha, and in the aftermath of his patron’s
death, following a brief removal from public office, he returned to office as reisülküttab
during Murad IV’s Baghdad campaign. He was also an important member of the Bayrami-
Melami circles in the capital. He was well known for his enormous commentary on the
Mesnevi, the Cevahir-i Bevahir-i Mesnevi, and hence was given the epithet şarihü’l-mesnevi,
“the commentator of the mesnevi” by his contemporaries. His commentary on the first
volume of the Mesnevi, which he dedicated to Murad IV in 1631, is the largest Mesnevi
commentary written in the seventeenth century.
78 Nasihatü’l-mülük tergiban li-hüsni’s-sülük, Beyazıd Devlet Kütüphanesi, MS 1977.