Daily Life In The Ottoman Empire (26 page)

In their journey to reach union with God, Sufis sought out
knowledge and interpretation related to the inner and esoteric (
batini
)
aspects of Islam. This was in sharp contrast with the ulema and the
medreses,
or religious schools, where the outer and exoteric (
zahiri
)
knowledge of Islam was emphasized. The Sufis did not, however, view mysticism
as an intellectual activity confined to elaborating esoteric concepts such as
detachment from the world. For them, such concepts could be understood only
when one embarked on the spiritual journey towards union with God. In this
context, Sufism was essentially a human enterprise, one that combated and
neutralized the dry, and, at times, harsh aspects of official Islam by allowing
the seeker to design and initiate his own unique journey to spiritual peace and
salvation.

In contrast to the ulema, who asserted the absolute and
unassailable superiority of Islam over other religions and religious
traditions, many Sufis viewed all religions and religious leaders as fellow
travelers on the same mystic path, seeking Gnostic wisdom (
maarifet)
by
submitting themselves to the way of Truth (
tarik-i hak
). Thus, in the
poetry of many Sufi masters, Moses and Jesus were praised as great men of
knowledge, humanity, spirituality, and integrity, whose lives and actions
provided exemplary models for Muslims and all of humanity. The teachings and
practices of some Sufi orders, therefore, contained a strong element of
respect, appreciation, and tolerance toward non-Muslims and stood in sharp
contrast to the rigid interpretations of Islam by the ulema, who viewed
Christians and Jews as dirty, inferior, and unequal to Muslims.

Even in their public appearance, the ulema and Sufi masters
stood at diametrically opposite poles. The ulema appeared in public with pomp
and ceremony, dressed in beautiful and expensive clothing, and surrounded by
followers, servants, and attendants, ranging from menial domestics and
bodyguards to companions and agents. In sharp contrast, the Sufi leaders
adhered to the principles of simplicity and humility. They generally wore a
simple white tunic made of wool or, less commonly, linen, and refused to adorn
themselves with precious stones. Some “wandering mendicant”
dervişes
“deliberately
flouted Muslim opinion by shaving their beards, hair, and eyebrows and by
throwing off the restraints of the Holy Law and most others.” Turning their
backs to the vanities of this world, they renounced all human obsessions and
small satisfactions of riches and empty honors. Instead, they chose a solitary
life of contemplation, meditation, humility, and silence. In choosing solitude
and silence, they emphasized the limitations of language to express inner
experience and attributed a peripheral significance to religious piety. They
ridiculed the pretentious religiosity of the ulema and their pompous public
postures and sermons, which for the Sufis were another sad manifestation of
man’s ego. Sufi masters considered the ulema’s religious dogmatism,
narrow-mindedness, and intolerance, the cause of most calamities, including
that of fanaticism and oppression.

The Sufis demonstrated their tolerant attitude by absorbing
Islamic heresies, as well as Shia and Christian beliefs and practices. It is
not surprising, therefore, that the Sunni ulema viewed the activities of Sufi
teachers with apprehension and trepidation, and frequently denounced them as
hypocrites, innovators, and heretics. In particular, the Sunni religious
establishment detested the pantheistic beliefs and doctrines of various Sufi
orders, “which seemed to impugn the transcendental unity of God,” as well as “their
idolatrous worship of saints and holy places; their thaumaturgic practices and
suspect methods of inducing ecstasy,” and “their laxness in observing the
divine law.”

Throughout the long history of the Ottoman Empire, the
philosophical and doctrinal conflict between the ulema and the Sufi orders
ignited rivalries and jealousies between prominent religious leaders and
influential Sufi masters. The antagonism between the two camps was also
reflected in unrelenting battles over consumption of coffee and tobacco, which
the religious establishment condemned and the Sufi orders defended.

Each Sufi brotherhood was founded around loyalty, devotion,
and belief in the teachings of a particular Sufi master (
şeyh
/
sheikh
),
who was at times revered as a saint. During their life on earth, each
şeyh
had, through his teachings and practices, established a distinct pathway to
attainment of spiritual truth and union with God. His followers, who had
adopted him as their guide (
murşid
)
,
gathered in a Sufi
lodge (
tekke)
for communal prayer and ecstatic worship (
zikr)
, as
well as a set of distinct practices prescribed by their spiritual leader. These
lodges served as spiritual retreats and hospices for travelers. Financed by
contributions from their members, they usually had a mausoleum (
türbe)
,
where the veneration of the saints and founders of the order took place, a “hall
for prayers and rituals (
tevhidhane, semahane,
or
meydan)
” and a “kitchen
(
matbah, aş evi, mutfak
).” Because serving food to travelers and
the poor constituted one of the principal functions of the Sufi orders, the
kitchen occupied a central role in
derviş
lodges. Among some
orders, such as those of the Mevlevis and Bektaşis, the kitchen was used
as a space “for training and initiation” of new recruits.

In the 17th century when coffee drinking spread among the
masses, many Sufi establishments, “particularly in the Balkans, incorporated a
special room for the preparation of coffee, known as the
kahve ocağu.
”
Many large
tekkes
also had baths, libraries, “reception and meeting
halls (
mosafer odasi, meydan odasi)
, cells or chambers for the
şeyh
and dervishes (
hücerat)
, and often one or several small spaces,
generally without windows, for spiritual seclusion (
halvet odasi,
halvethane, çilehane
).” Large Sufi lodges and hospices contained homes and
apartments for the family of the
şeyh,
and some were attached to a
mosque and a garden that they kept immaculate. Thus,
derviş
lodges “were
not only places of worship, but also housing complexes where people lived and
carried out the routines of everyday life.” As late as 1885, 1,091 men and
1,184 women lived in 260
tekkes
in Istanbul.

In earlier Ottoman times, lodges and hospices established
and run by
ahis,
or semireligious/semimystical fraternities in Anatolia,
provided food, shelter, and hospitality to all travelers regardless of social
background. As the North African traveler Ibn Battuta described, the
ahis
built
hospices and guesthouses and furnished them with rugs, lamps, and other
equipments they required. The members of the brotherhood worked “during the day
to gain their livelihood, and after the afternoon prayer,” gathered “their
collective earnings”; with this they bought “fruit, food, and the other things
needed for consumption in the hospice.” Whenever a traveler arrived at the
hospice, they served him food and lodging, while Quran readers recited the holy
book, and if no newcomer arrived, the members of the brotherhood assembled,
ate, and, after eating, sang and danced. In the later Ottoman period, many Sufi
convents followed the same traditions and practices, providing food, lodging,
and hospitality to travelers from far and near. Devout
dervişes
—barefoot
and bareheaded, and dressed in rough, patched woolen cloaks—pursued a life of
poverty, withdrawal, isolation, and quiet meditation. As they “were expected to
provide a bowl of soup” for the visiting guests, “the cauldron, on the boil day
and night, became a symbol of hospitality.”

Some of the early Ottoman sultans were followers of Sufi
masters who participated in various Ottoman military campaigns and provided the
ruler and his troops with spiritual support and guidance. It was their alliance
with the Ottoman state that allowed Sufi brotherhoods to establish themselves
in the Balkans. Given their close interaction and association with various Sufi
orders, it is not surprising that the Islam of the early Ottomans, and the
gazis
who supported them, lacked the theological sophistication of the Muslim
ulema who dominated the mosques and seminaries of Anatolia’s urban centers. The
religious beliefs of these Ottoman rulers were simple, personal, unorthodox,
eclectic, and mystical. One of the earliest accounts of the rise of Osman, the
founder of the Ottoman state, describes how he received a blessing from Şeyh
Edebali, a prominent Sufi leader, who handed him the sword of a
gazi
and
prophesized that his descendants would rule the world. When Osman died, the
ceremony that decided the succession of his son, Orhan, to the throne took
place at a
zaviye,
a hospice run and managed by
dervişes
for
travelers.

With the rise of the empire and the establishment of
Ottoman power in the urban centers of Anatolia where Sunni Islam dominated the
social and cultural life of the Muslim community, the state became increasingly
identified with the official Islam of the ulema. Sufi traditions and practices
were never abandoned, however, and mystical orders continued to enjoy great
popularity and respect, allowing them to play a prominent role in the daily
life of many Muslims in the empire.

This popularity and mass appeal may explain why Sufi
mystics and
derviş
leaders led several major uprisings against the
Ottoman state. For example, the revolt of Şeyh Bedreddin in 1416 against
the authority of the Ottoman sultan, Mehmed I (1413–1421), brought the empire
to the verge of extinction. Influenced by the mystical writings of such
prominent philosophers and Sufi writers as Ibn Arabi (1165–1240), Bedreddin
believed that the world was ancient, without a beginning, without an end, and
not created in time. If the physical world disappeared, the spiritual world
would disappear as well; “creation and destruction” was “an eternal process,”
and “this world and the next, in their entirety” were “imaginary fantasies.” The
revolutionary Sufi
şeyh
rejected heaven and hell, as well as the
Day of Judgment, and the resurrection of the body. He also dismissed any
difference between Muslims and non-Muslims, allowed his followers to drink
wine, and advocated distribution of land among his followers, who included
landless peasants. The ulema accused him of ignoring the Islamic law and
denounced him as a heretic. Şeyh Bedreddin’s revolt was crushed by Ottoman
troops, and he was executed by order of Mehmed I in 1416.

Bedreddin’s followers, however, continued to preach, and
one of his disciples, Börklüce Mustafa, organized a revolt against the Ottoman
government by instigating an uprising among Turcoman tribal groups in a region
near Izmir in western Anatolia. Börklüce “preached that all things, except for
women, were common property.” As with Bedreddin, he also rejected the
inequality between Muslims and Christians and declared that any Muslim who
called a Christian an infidel was himself an infidel. Once again, the Ottoman
government sent its forces against the rebellious Sufi
şeyh,
who
was captured and executed together with hundreds of his followers.

BEKTAŞIS

The first major Sufi brotherhood in the Ottoman state, that
of the Bektaşi Sufi order, emerged as a powerful social and political
force in Anatolia during the 14th century. The order continued to play a
prominent role in the daily life of the empire until the establishment of the
Turkish Republic in 1923. The leaders (
babas
/
dedes
) of the order
acted as the chaplains to the janissary corps, and the brotherhood recruited
heavily from manufacturing guilds in Istanbul and other large urban centers of
the Ottoman Empire. The alliance between the Bektaşi order and the
janissaries was symbolized in various public events and parades as the
chaplains of the brotherhood marched near the commander of the infantry corps
reciting prayers and incantations with their daggers drawn from their sheaths. It
is not surprising, therefore, that the power of the Bektaşi order
diminished after Sultan Mahmud II disbanded the janissary corps in 1826 and
closed down many of the brotherhood’s centers.

The Bektaşis traced the origins of their order to the
Persian Sufi master Haci Bektaş Veli (Haji Baktash Vali), who is believed
to have lived in the 13th century. His teachings, which were given a definite
form by Balim Sultan, the leader of the order in the 16th century, were greatly
influenced by the beliefs, customs, and practices prevalent in Shia Islam, as well
as in certain Sufi doctrines of the Hurufi movement that had spread from
northeastern Iran to Azerbaijan and Anatolia in the 14th and 15th centuries.

The Bektaşis acknowledged the 12 Shia imams and
venerated the first Shia imam, Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the prophet
Muhammad, whom they believed to be one with God (Allah) and Muhammad in a
single united entity. Though denied by the Bektaşis, many observers referred
to this unity as a form of belief in trinity. As with the Twelver Shia (
Ithna
Asharis)
in Iran and elsewhere, the Bektaşis also mourned the death of
Husayn, the third Shia Imam and the son of Ali and Fatima (the daughter of the
prophet Muhammad), whose martyrdom was commemorated every year on the tenth of
Muharram,
the first month in the Islamic calendar. To share in the suffering of
Husayn and his family, mourners beat their chests with fists and chains, and
cut and repeatedly struck their foreheads with swords and knives. From the
first to the tenth of
Muharram,
the Bektaşis also celebrated the
nights of mourning for the Shia martyrs and especially those Shia figures who
had perished in infancy. In their daily rituals, the Bektaşis showed a
general disregard for Muslim rituals such as the daily prayers. They believed
that the holy Quran contained two levels of knowledge and meaning: the first
was the outer and exoteric (
zahir)
, and the second was the inner and
esoteric (
batin)
, which constituted the eternal meaning of the holy
book. This inner meaning was only available to a very few and was the meaning
and instruction sought by Sufis. The Bektaşis were led by their leader (
çelebi)
who lived in the monastery (
tekke)
of Pir Evi (The Tomb of the Founder)
at Haci Bektaş in central Anatolia. The head of each Bektaşi
tekke
was called
baba
(father).