The Ottoman State and Descendants of the Prophet in Anatolia and the Balkans pdf download

The Ottoman State and Descendants of the Prophet in Anatolia and the Balkans (c. 1500-1700) by Hülya Canbakal

THE OTTOMAN STATE AND DESCENDANTS OF THE PROPHET IN ANATOLIA AND THE BALKANS

Abstract

Throughout the Islamic world those claiming descent from the Prophet Muhammad (T. seyyid/şerif, pl. sadat/eşraf ) were (and are) accorded a special status.

This article shows that the process of teseyyüd (“seyyidization”) not only took place through official awards but also through appropriation. In the Ottoman Empire registers thus began to be kept of officially recognized sadat.

The examination of these, largely un(der)studied, sources argue that the state sometimes employed its capacity to seyyidize for (cultural) political purposes. The article also sheds valuable light on Ottoman policies vis-à-vis tribalism and nomadism.

Throughout Islamic history, descendants of the Prophet Muḥammad (T. seyyid/şerif, pl. sadat/eşraf )3 have been venerated, and they enjoyed a variety of privileges in all parts of the Islamic world.

Therefore, belonging to ‘the People of the House’ (Ahl al-Bayt) invariably conferred prestige and often wealth.

Furthermore, sadat’s power tended to extend to whoever honored them and championed their well-being. In some historical settings, however, the House of Muhammad assumed additional significance so that a great many people, commoners and rulers alike, claimed to have descended from it. Rulers’ claims were linked with state-making and political competition while civilian claims too could be linked with political processes in a variety of ways.

For example, the proselytizing dervishes in medieval India whose fictive descendants came to constitute a virtual caste claiming Muhammadan nobility did not have a political project per se, but the confessional and social space they colonized eventually served several state-builders in the region.4

In late medieval Anatolia and the Balkans, something similar happened. Early claimants of the title were sufi mystics who were instrumental in conquering the lands where the Ottoman state was to emerge.5 An important difference was that seyyidship in Ottoman territories never became entrenched in as rigid a social hierarchy as in India.

Yet, Ottoman territories, too, saw fictive claims of Muhammadan nobility as early as the sixteenth century and in increasing numbers thereafter.

Thousands of Ottoman subjects claimed descent from the Prophet’s House, some buying or stealing certificates, others bribing officials, or forging genealogies.

The Ottomans called false claims of Muhammadan nobility teseyyüd’, literally meaning ‘to feign nobility’ or self-ennoblement.

According to the ruling elite’s own account of the matter, teseyyüd was a unilateral phenomenon, a transgression by ordinary people.

 Transgression though it indeed was, of the purity of the noble line to say the least, the state indirectly contributed to teseyyüd by provoking a defensive reflex among its subjects against religious, fiscal and administrative consolidation.

Furthermore, it can be argued that teseyyüd emerged as a strategy of defense and resistance because, paradoxically, the state officially granted certain privileges and immunities to sadat.

Secondly, it is also possible that the state manipulated the title for purposes of patronage when political exigency so required, as in a distinct way, in the sixteenth century.

The Ottoman term ‘teseyyüd’ falls short of capturing these multiple dynamics behind the claims of seyyidship; hence my proposal to coin the new term ‘seyyidization’, which invokes the double sense of self-ennoblement and ennoblement by the state.

This dual sense applies to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Anato- lia and the Balkans more than any other part of the empire or other period because judging by the Registers of the Imperial Nakibüleşraf,6 it was during these two centuries that the Ottoman state aspired to maintain direct control over the sadat in these two zones, if partially.

While claims of seyyidship were not limited to any particular social, ethnic or religious group, as studies on later periods indicate, the study of these registers suggests a strong link in this zone between Ottoman policies and seyyidization on the one hand, and tribalism and the Alid challenge on the other.

The Source

This study is based on Registers of the Imperial Nakibüleşraf, an underutilized, important source for studying sadat of the Ottoman realm.7 Yet, they are limited in a number of ways partly reflecting the limits of Ottoman territorial control.

First, Nakibüleşraf registers offer no vision of local con- flicts and power struggles that propelled seyyidization in different regions and periods.8 Secondly and more importantly, although they offer an all-around view from the cihannüma9 of Istanbul, where the imperial marshal stood, that view does not extend very far, normally, not further than the core lands of the empire, i.e. the eastern Balkans and Anatolia, largely excluding the area to the east of Sivas and Adana.

Therefore, Kurdish sadat are largely left uncovered.10 By the same token, we do not encounter Arab sadat in the Registers of the Imperial Nakibüleşraf either.

Thus, it would appear, affairs of the sadat in Eastern Anatolia as well as the Arab provinces were managed locally, if by appointees of the capital in some important provincial centers.

Deputies (kaymakam) of the Imperial Nakibüleşraf in the provinces kept track of the sadat in their region without having to get approval from the capital.11

This diversity in the degree of central intervention conformed to the general pattern of Ottoman administrative practices. It was further reinforced by the fact that the Arab provinces had longer and well-established traditions of managing the Muhammadan pedigree.

Furthermore, places of historical significance such as Mecca, Karbala, Najaf, and Baghdad certified genealogies also for claimants from Anatolia,12 and this signified, not a division of labor but competition with Istanbul for the authority to designate Muhammadan nobility. This study focuses on the area over which Istanbul claimed and exercised direct authority.

The Registers of the Imperial Nakibüleşraf are limited in their chrono- logical scope as well.

They start with records of the first Nakibüleşraf Mah- mud Efendi (1495/96-1536/37), and last until the end of the empire, but with a major gap extending roughly from 1695 to 1874. In other words, they leave out a very important and lively period in the history of seyyidization in the Ottoman realm.

Thanks to pioneering studies by Bodman, Rafeq, Batatu, and later, Ph. Khoury, Schatkowski Schilcher, and Winter,13 we know that the popular demand for the title peaked in some of the Arab provinces in the eighteenth century, and remained high at least part of the nineteenth century. Such may have been the case in Anatolia as well.14

As for the records from 1874-1923, they tell more about Ottoman administrative reforms than sadat of the realm or seyyidization.

In any case, the way the Ottoman state tackled the question of (religious) nobility in this period is related to its new visions of citizenship, Islamic modernity and Sunni orthodoxy, and these topics fall in an area of expertise I am hardly