Al-Tikriti|105both Arabic and Turkish throughout the Istanbul elite. Stating that insufficient
legal proofs had been provided for outlawing even the lowly raksҕ, he concluded
that therefore no scholarly consensus existed for prohibiting semāɇ,devrān, or
raksҕ. Sünbül Sinan’s treatise appears to have carried the day, because several
prominent clerics from that point forward either remained silent on the issue
or switched positions altogether. Ibn-i Kemal’s predecessor as şeyhülislam,Zen-
billi ɇAlī Cemālī Efendi (d. 1526), appears to have reversed his position entirely,
declaring in margin notes on one of the Turkish copies that the arguments were
entirely correct and that anyone opposing such arguments had fallen into kufr.
Similarly, Ibn-i Kemal issued yet another treatise on the topic, this time appar-
ently persuaded by the strengths of the Sufi position, as well as by his personal
f riendship w it h Sünbü l Sina n. In t his treatise he arg ued t hat no mat ter how much
Sufi rituals might resemble simple raksҕ, they are not the same, because the Sufis’
intent is to cleanse the soul of all things outside the divine and direct oneself to
God. While he repeated that raksҕfor entertainment alone should be blocked and
conceded that some scholars had found grounds for prohibition, he concluded
that since there was no consensus for prohibition, such ritual practices should
be considered licit. The debate did not die with this generation, and it came up
repeatedly well into the seventeenth century, so ultimately Ibn-i Kemal’s position
decided nothing permanent. For example, Ibn-i Kemal’s renowned student and
successor as şeyhülislam, EbūɆs-suɇūd (d. 1574), even issued his own fatwa defining
the boundary between licit devrān and illicit raksҕas certain movements of head,
hips, and feet. Although several powerful clerics had wanted such ritual practice
banned around the turn of the sixteenth century, and although the debate was by
no means put to rest, Ibn-i Kemal’s change of position helped defend it as it grad-
ually evolved into one of the hallmark characteristics of Ottoman-era Sufism.
Mapping Schism
In addition to defining external actions that constitute apostasy and can be con-
sidered capital offenses, rehabilitating the legacy of Ibn ɇArabī, and adjudicating
proper spiritual celebration, Ibn-i Kemal placed Ottoman correct belief against
competing streams of thought in Islamic history by describing such streams and
pointing out their errors. The primary way he did so was through several trea-
tises that offered his version of the long-standing structuralist view of Islamic
schisms in response to a famous quote by the Prophet Muতammad stating that
there would be seventy-three sects in Islam, only one of which would be cor-
rect. According to Ibn-i Kemal, the seventy-two false sects were divided into six
umbrella schools, with twelve particular sects in each school. Reflecting an Otto-
man view of the historical other, he defined the six primary trends and described
the mistaken beliefs of each school of thought. While his was by no means the