The “Sunna-minded” Trend 261
year, Beyazızade gave another harsh and equally controversial sentence: the
execution of a master scribe of daybooks (ruznamçe hulefası), Patburunzade
Mehmed Halife, for allegedly making statements amounting to apostasy.94
The historian Defterdar Sarı Mehmed Pasha described Beyazızade as someone
known among his ulema peers and the people for his temper and harshness.95
A quick examination of the corpus of works he left behind reveals that Hanafi
law occupied a central place for Beyazızade, both for the practice of law and as
a main doctrinal source. Among the works written by Beyazızade are a juridical
sakk collection intended as a guidebook for novice judges, a Quranic commen-
tary, a treatise on Abu Hanifa’s legal method, and another one on the denunci-
ation of infidels.96 What is interesting is that, according to contemporaneous
sources, in both the stoning case and the Patburunzade case Beyazızade ruled
in favor of the application of strictly Shari sentences despite the inadequate
number of witnesses as required by the same Shari stipulations.
Nonetheless, there were also dissenting voices against this increasing
“Salafization” of the discourse concerning non-Muslims, those who were
Ottoman subjects as well those living in the abode of war. For example, al-
though he is known to have supported the aggressive gaza policy of the
grand vizier Fazıl Ahmed Pasha, Niyazi Mısri was infuriated by the treatment
of non-Muslims in the empire and reminded the authorities that it was the
taxes paid by the non-Muslims that constituted the core of the tyrants’ wealth
and so the former’s wealth, lives, honor (ırz), and blood had to be protected.97
Mehmed İlmi, in the Nüshat, advised Murad IV not to take his enemies light-
ly, and even to prefer peace to war in certain situations.98 He quoted several
Quranic verses praising peace and warned the sultan that the biggest mistake
medreses, he was first appointed judge of Aleppo (1666), then of Bursa (1672), and of
Istanbul (1672). He was appointed chief military judge of Rumili in 1680.
94 In his Zübde-i vekaiyât, Defterdar Sarı Mehmed related that other scribes at the day-book
bureau informed the chief mufti of Patburunzade’s words. The chief mufti, however, dis-
missed the case, citing the inadequacy of witnesses. Yet when Patburunzade publicly crit-
icized Beyazızade’s decision to sentence the aforementioned adulterers to public stoning,
Beyazızade seized the opportunity to count the evidence as admissible and dragged
Patburunzade to execution. While conceding that Patburunzade’s loquaciousness could
get him into trouble, Defterdar claims that his life actually conformed to Islamic norms.
Defterdar – Özcan 1995, 115 and cf. Sariyannis 2005–2006.
95 Defterdar – Özcan 1995, 210.
96 Ahmed b. Hüsameddin Hasan b. Sinan el-Bosnevi Beyazizade, al-Tahqiq fi al-radd ala
al-zindiq, Süleymaniye, Esad Efendi, MS 1468; al-Usul al-munifa li al-imam Abu Hanifa,
Süleymaniye, Esad Efendi, MS 1140; Sak, Lala İsmail, MS 93. For a discussion of his place
in the seventeenth-century Ottoman kalam circles, see Çelebi 1998.
97 Terzioğlu 1999, 318–320.
98 Kadızade Mehmed İlmi, Nushü’l-hükkâm, 69.