Living in the Ottoman Realm. Empire and Identity, 13th to 20th Centuries

Karataş|89

of Sultan Bayezid II and became the shaykh of the sultan. He enjoyed royal
patronage until his death.
Karamani, however, never set foot in Istanbul. He left or had to leave İskilip
permanently, probably around 1481, and followed a peripatetic career for the re-
maining fifteen years of his life. He must have spent considerable time in Konya,
the center of the Karamanid faction, since the most prominent of his successors
was trained in that city. His dervishes began to establish lodges in Istanbul only
after the end of Bayezid II’s reign.
When Karamani started his Sufi career in the mid-fifteenth century, he
could not establish lodges in Istanbul because his order, the Halvetiye, did not
belong to any Ottoman network. Toward the end of his life, the Halvetiye became
a full-fledged Ottoman order, but Karamani still had to stay away from Istanbul
because he belonged to the wrong Ottoman network. He was now an Ottoman,
but a politically marginalized one. Karamani’s hagiographer reports that Kara-
mani led a very ascetic life. He never lay down or leaned on something even for
sleep. During his last moments, he became too weak to stand unaided and asked
his dervishes to bring him a sack of corn to lean on. Habib-i Karamani died in
Amasya in 1496 leaning on that sack of corn.

Suggestions for Further Reading

Curry, John J. The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought in the Ottoman Em-
pire: The Rise of the Halveti Order, 1350– 1650. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh
University Press, 2010. A history of the Halvetiye, this book covers especially the
seventeenth century against the backdrop of the rise of puritanical movements.
Curry, John J., and Erik S. Ohlander. Sufism and Society: Arrangements of the Mystical
in the Muslim World, 1200– 1800. London: Routledge, 2012. This edited volume on
Sufism has articles on a variety of topics such as the relationship between doctrine
and practice.
Le Gall, Dina. A Culture of Sufism: Naqshbandis in the Ottoman World, 1450– 1700.
Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. This is a history of the Naqsh-
bandiya order, which was a strong rival to the Halvetiye.
Yürekli, Zeynep. Architecture and Hagiography in the Ottoman Empire: The Politics of
Bektashi Shrines in the Classical Age. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012. This book
investigates the formation and Ottomanization of the Bektashi order, which is
situated on the political and religious margins of Ottoman imperial order.

Notes

. LamiɆi Çelebi, Futūh al-Mucāhidīn, 577.

. Ibid., 577–578. All translations in this chapter are mine.

. Ibid., 577.