The Eighteenth Century: the Traditionalists 371
behavior should be printed and propagated by specially-appointed preachers
and muftis, who should do this instead of frequenting the ayan’s banquets; in
the same vein, the kazaskers should choose two supervisors (nazir) to inspect
the provincial ulema at regular intervals. Similarly, but much more emphati-
cally, Ömer Faik’s main idea is that “spiritual recovery” (ma ’nevi kalkınma)
should have its place in the reform program. He stresses that the Ottoman state
is in fact “the Muhammedan state” and Selim the “leader of the believers”;80
thus, it has to follow the Sharia and practise justice in order to gain victory
against its enemies and welfare for its subjects. As an example of the arrange-
ments that could be criticized, Ömer Faik cites no less a figure than Ebussu’ud
Efendi. To achieve this goal, jurisprudence (fikh) must be read in the mosques
and the population illuminated in religious matters; this way, people will obey
the dynasty and pray for the sultan. “Zeal for the religious sciences leads to
reform of the world” (ilm-i dine rağbet ıslah-ı aleme sebeb), Ömer Faik notes.
He suggests that dervishes and sheikhs should help with their prayers all over
the Ottoman lands; imams serving in the houses of magnates should help the
needy in secret, paying the debts of those imprisoned and so forth, in order
to cause prayers in favor of the sultan; finally, in times of campaign, dervish
sheikhs should be paid to pray until the final victory.81 Ömer Faik describes
in the grimmest colors the situation of the ulema: he claims that the number
of medrese students has fallen dramatically over the last thirty years, as well
as both the number and the quality of the lessons delivered in the sultanly
mosques.
What is impressive in both authors, compared to earlier discussions of the
ulema hierarchy, is their common ideas on state control of religious matters.
The ulema hierarchy may have been under the indirect control of the sultan’s
power from time to time in previous centuries, but here Behic and Ömer Faik
suggest that a fundamental unity of state, people, and ulema must be main-
tained. Ömer Faik’s grand plan for recovery, in which “apparent” and spiritual
measures are coupled, and where fikh subtleties would be taught to the be-
lievers from the mosques (rather than being the monopoly of the learned), is
not as different from Behic Efendi’s state-regulated inspections of the ulema
80 Beydilli (1999b, 37) notes a similar assertion recorded by Cabi – Beyhan 2003, 1:84, as
a mystic revelation to Cezzar Ahmed Pasha: “this state is neither the Exalted State nor
the Ottoman State, it is called the Muhammedan State” (bu devlet ne devlet-i aliyye ne
de devlet-i osmaniyyedir, buna devlet-i muhammediyye derler). In the famous Sened-i it-
tifak, which marks the ayan’s consent to the rise of Mahmud II, it is also stated that
“the Exalted Ottoman State is in fact a Muhammedan realm” (Akyıldız 1998, 215: Devlet-i
Aliyye-i Osmaniyye Saltanat-ı Muhammediyye olup).
81 A practice stopped by Selim III, as noted in Beydilli 1999b, 39.