Syllabus

HIST 623: Scholars, Sultans and Law in the Ottoman Empire
Instructor: Abdurrahman Atçıl
Phone: 9740
Email: [email protected]
Office Hours: by appointment
Description
The main focus of this course is the development of the Ottoman imperial enterprise after
the conquest of Constantinople until the end of the sixteenth century. We will pay special
attention to the creation of a civil bureaucracy of scholars, the development of a
comprehensive legal system and the accommodation of the Islamic and Turco-Mongol
heritages in the Ottoman Empire. In addition, the influences of multiple imperial
traditions on the formation of Ottoman imperial ideology and administration, the
evolution of bureaucracy and law, scholars, religion as well as heresy and orthodoxy will
be investigated.
Texts
A number of primary and secondary texts will be read and analyzed. The instructor will
distribute copies of primary texts in the class. Students can acquire copies of secondary
texts in the university library.
Requirements
This course is a seminar as well as a writing course. Students will make presentations
about the secondary literature on assigned topics and come to the class as prepared to
discuss primary texts. We will read and dissect a variety of texts in original and in
translation, from biographical dictionaries, law codes, and archival documents to
scholarly treatises. In addition, students will write a seminar paper.
Attendance and Participation: Students are expected to read and reflect on the
assignments of each week before the class meeting.
Presentation: Students will make a presentation about an article, a book chapter or a
whole book every week. No auditing without presenting each week! Sorry!
Papers: Students will write a paper (20-25 pages) based on primary sources. They will
write a paragraph about the topic, questions and sources of their paper and present it in
the class in the fourth meeting. In a week after that, they will send the instructor a
bibliography, including primary and secondary sources. The first draft of the papers will
be finished and sent to the instructor in the first week of December. Students will receive
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feedback from the instructor and then work on their papers to prepare the final draft. The
class will come together for the presentation of the papers in the first week of January.
The final version of the papers will be submitted in the second week of January.
Grading
Attendance and Participation % 30
Paper % 70
I
Introductory Meeting
II
The Rise of Scholars as Autonomous Class
Ira M. Lapidus, “The Separation of State and Religion in the Development of Early
Islamic Society,” International Journal of Middle East Studies (1975): 363–85.
Patricia Crone and Martin Hinds, God’s Caliph: Religious Authority in the First
Centuries of Islam (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 24–110.
Muhammad Qasım Zaman, Religion and Politics under the Early ‘Abbasids: the
Emergence of the Proto-Sunni Elite (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 70 – 118.
John A. Nawas, “A Reexamination of Three Current Explanations for al-Maʾmun’s
Introduction of the Mihna,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 26, no. 4
(1994): 615–29.
Wael B. Hallq, The Origins and Evolution of Islamic Law (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2005), 57 – 78.
Joseph E. Lowry, Early Islamic Legal Theory: The Risala of Muhammad ibn Idris alShafiʿi (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007), 277–98.
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III
Madrasa
George Makdisi, The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981), 35–74.
Omid Safi, The Politics of Knowledge in Premodern Islam, 82–104.
Jonathan Porter Berkey, The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo: A Social
History of Islamic Education (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 96–127.
Michael Chamberlain, Knowledge and Social Practice in Medieval Damascus, 11901350 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 69–107.
IV
The Mongol and Mamluk Models, and the Early Ottomans
Broadbridge, Anne F. Kingship and Ideology in the Islamic and Mongol Worlds (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
Maria E. Subtelny, “Tamerlane and his Descendants: from Paladins to Patrons,” in The
New Cambridge History of Islam: The Eastern Islamic World Eleventh to Eighteenth
Centuries, edited by David O. Morgan and Anthony Reid, (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2010), 169-200.
Heath W. Lowry, The Nature of the Early Ottoman State (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 2003).
Cemal Kafadar, Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1995), 118–54.
Murteza Bedir, “Osmanlı Tarihinin Kuruluş Asrında (1389’a kadar) İlmiye’ye Dair Bir
Araştırma: İlk Fakihler,” Türk Hukuk Tarihi Araştırmaları 1 (2006): 23–39.
Ertuğrul Ökten, “Scholars and Mobility,” Osmanlı Araştırmaları Dergisi 41 (2013): 55–
70.
The biographies of “Molla Fenari” from Al-Shaqaiq and Mecdi.
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V
The Conquest of Constantinople, Imperial Vision and Scholars
Ahmet Ateş, “İstanbul’un Fethine Dair Fatih Sultan Mehmed Tarafından Gönderilen
Mektuplar ve Bunlara Gelen Cevablar,”İstanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi
4, no. 7 (1953): 11 – 50.
Halil İnalcık, “The Policy of Mehmed II toward the Greek Population of Istanbul and the
Byzantine Buildings of the City,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 23 (1969): 229 – 49.
Stefanos Yerasimos, Kostantiniye ve Ayasofya Efsaneleri, trans. Şirin Tekeli (Istanbul:
Iletişim, 1993).
Richard C. Repp, “Some Observations on the Development of the Ottoman Learned
Hierarchy,” in Scholars, Saints, and Sufis: Muslim Religious Institutions in the Middle
East since 1500, ed. Nikki R. Keddie, 17–32 (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1972).
Julian Raby, “Mehmed the Conqueror’s Greek Scriptorium,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 37
(1983): 18–19.
Gülru Necipoğlu, Architecture, Ceremonial, and Power: The Topkapi Palace in the
Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (New York: Architectural History Foundation, 1991),
xi – 30.
Feridun M. Emecen, Fetih ve Kıyamet 1453 (Istanbul: Timaş Yayınları, 2012), 23 – 78.
Mehmed II’s “Teşkilat Kanunnamesi.”. In Ahmet Akgündüz, Osmanlı Kanunnameleri ve
Hukuki Tahlilleri, vol. 1, 311 – 45.
VI
The Consolidation of the Scholarly Bureaucracy in the Sixteenth Century
Yasemin Beyazıt, Osmanlı İlmiye Mesleğinde İstihdam (XVI. Yüzyıl) (Ankara: Türk Tarih
Kurumu, 2014).
Yasemin Beyazıt, “Efforts to Reform Entry into the Ottoman İlmiyye Career towards the
End of the 16th Century: The 1598 Ottoman İlmiyye Kanunnamesi.” Turcica 44 (2013):
201–18.
Cornell H. Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: The Historian
Mustafa Ali (1541-1600) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 191 – 231.
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Fleischer, “The Lawgiver as Messiah,” in Soliman le Magnifique 159–77.
Necipoğlu, “A Kanun for the State, A Canon for the Arts: Conceptualizing the Classical
Synthesis of Ottoman Art and Architecture,” in Soliman le Magnifique, 195–216.
Mehmet İpşirli, “Osmanlı Devleti’nde Kazaskerlik (XVII. Yüzyıla Kadar),” Belleten 61,
no. 232 (1998): 597–700.
Madeline C. Zilfi, “Sultan Süleyman and the Ottoman Religious Establishment,” in
Süleyman the Second and His Time, eds. Halil İnalcık and Cemal Kafadar, 109–20
(Istanbul: The ISIS Press, 1993).
VII
Sunni Identity and Scholars in the Ottoman Empire
Derin Terzioğlu, “How to Conceptualize Ottoman Sunnitization.”
Said Amir Arjomand, “The Rise of Shah Esma’il as a Mahdist Revolution,” Studies On
Persianate Societies 3 (2005).
Melike: Saim Savaş, XVI. Asırda Anadolu’da Alevilik (Ankara: Vadi Yayınları, 2002).
Ahmet Yasar Ocak, Zındıklar ve Mulhidler.
İsmail Sefa Üstün, “Heresy and Legitimacy in the Ottoman Empire in the Sixteenth
Century.”
Barbara Flemming, “Public Opinion under Sultan Süleyman.”
Guy Burak, “Faith, Law and Empire in the Ottoman ‘Age of Confessionalization’
(Fifteenth-Seventeenth Centuries): The Case of ‘renewal of faith’,” Mediterranean
Historical Review 28, no. 1 (2013): 1–23.
Adel Allouche, The Origins and Development of the Ottoman-Safavid Conflict (906962/1500-1555) (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1983), 30–64.
Sarıgörez Nureddin Hamza’s pamphlet
İbn Kemal’s risale
Ebussuud’s fetvas
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VIII
Kanun and Şeriat
Halil İnalcık, “Islamization of Ottoman Laws on Land and Land Tax,” in OsmanistikTurkologie-Diplomatik, edited by Christa Fragner and Klaus Schwarz, 101 – 18 (Berlin:
Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1992).
Ömer Lutfi Barkan, “Osmanli Kanunnameleri,” in XV ve XVI ıncı Asırlarda Osmanlı
İmparatorluğunda Zirai Ekonominin Hukuki ve Mali Esasları, 2 vols. (Istanbul: İstanbul
Üniversitesi, 1943).
Jon E. Mandaville, “Usurious Piety: The Cash Waqf Controversy in the Ottoman
Empire,” IJMES 10, no. 3 (1979).
David Ayalon, “The Great Yasa of Chingiz Khan: A Reexamination,” SI 33 (1971): 97140, 151-80; 34 (1972) 113 – 58.
Nasi Aslan, “Klasik Dönem Ceza Kanunnâmeleri Bağlamında Osmanlı Hukûkunun
Şer’îliği Üzerine,” Çukurova Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, (2003), cilt: III,
sayı: 2, s. 17 – 44.
Baber Johansen, “Secular and Religious Elements in Hanafite Law, Function and Limits
of the Absolute Character of Government Authority.”
Halil İnalcık, “Osmanlı Hukukuna Giriş, Örfi-Sultani Hukuk ve Fatih’in Kanunları,” in
his Osmanlı Imparatorluğu, Toplum ve Ekonomi (Istanbul: Eren, 1993), 319-41.
Uriel Heyd, Studies in Old Ottoman Criminal Law. 167-207.
M. Akif Aydın, Türk Hukuk Tarihi (Istanbul: Beta Basım Yayım Dağıtım, 1995), 87–97.
Akgündüz, Osmanlı Kanunnameleri ve Hukuki Tahlilleri, vol. 1, 126-254.
“Budin Kanunnamesi Mukaddimesi”
“The Preamble of the Kanunname of Egypt” (Turkish and English)
IX
The Question of Ottoman Decline and the Nasihatname Literature
Bernard Lewis, “Ottoman Observers of Ottoman Decline.”
Rifaat Abou-el-Haj, Formation of the Modern State: The Ottoman Empire Sixteenth to
Eighteenth Centuries.
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Erol Ozvar, “Osmanlı tarihini dönemlendirme meselesi ve Osmanlı nasihat literature.”
Fleischer, “From Şehzâde Korkud toMustafa Âlî: Cultural Origins of the Ottoman
Nasihatname"
Douglas A. Howard, “Genre and myth in the Ottoman advice for kings literature.”
Baki Tezcan, The Second Ottoman Empire.
Cemal Kafadar, “The Question of Ottoman Decline.”
Hirzu'l-muluk
Kitab-i Mustetab
IX, X, XI
Readings of Primary Sources and Student Presentations
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