276 chapter 6
would be enthroned after him as Ahmed III). Mustafa II was known for his
zeal for renewing the tradition of his ancestors by leading gaza against the
infidels.157 Feyzullah was a central player in steering the imperial policy to-
wards gaza, and between 1695 and 1697 participated in all three military cam-
paigns against the Habsburgs, not as a passive member in the sultan’s entourage
but actively fighting in the army.158 He was also instrumental in concocting
an image of the sultan that employed a wholly Islamic vocabulary. Writing in
1699, Feyzullah declared Mustafa II the centennial renewer (müceddid) in a
short treatise that was recorded by Uşşakizade in his history.159 He also praised
the sultan for shunning pleasure, entertainment, and every amusement and
nonsensical involvement (rahat, melahi, lağv ve bitalet), very much echoing the
moralist discourses of the Kadızadelis before him.160
The Sharia-centered vocabulary that governed the reign of Mustafa II found
its most formal expression in an edict sent by the sultan to the deputy grand
vizier in 1696 that ordained that fermans and decrees should, from then on,
only refer to the “noble Sharia” and strictly advised against the coupling of the
terms Sharia and kanun.161 However, given our survey of the earlier espousals
of Sharia ideals by both Halveti and Kadızadeli preachers, Mustafa II’s priori-
tizing of the Sharia in lieu of the kanun should not seem unprecedented.
Mustafa II, Feyzullah Efendi, and the entire Feyzullah clique would soon
be toppled by the Edirne Incident. However the discourses they had been
championing went beyond merely the creation of the image of a gazi sultan:
they penetrated the upper segments of the imperial bureaucracy, which thus
began to emphasize its reverence to early Hanafi legal references in state ad-
ministration. Such testimony to the continuing observation of the Sharia by
the Ottoman political elites can even be found in an explicitly anti-Feyzullah
source, the Anonymous History covering the period between 1688 and 1704. The
person who commissioned it was probably the grand vizier Rami Mehmed
157 Nizri 2014, 103–104.
158 Nizri 2014, 110.
159 Kaylı 2010, 224; Uşşakizade – Gündoğdu 2005, 750–756.
160 Kaylı 2010, 224.
161 “Apart from the penalties (hudud) ordained by Allah and the penalties by the prophet
no penalties are to be laid down and chosen (ihtiyar), and interference by anyone else in
the commands of the illustrious sharia is null and is rejected. However, in some decrees
which have the character of kanun [the term] noble sharia is followed by and connected
with [the term] kanun. Not only is [the sharia thus] quoted in a place unbefitting it. It is
also highly perilous and most sinful to juxtapose the [terms] sharia and kanun. Therefore
in firmans and decrees all matters shall henceforth be based on the firm support of the
noble sharia only ... and warnings are given against the coupling of the [terms] noble
sharia and kanun ...” See Heyd 1973, 154–155.