The Disenchantment of Sufism, the Rationalization of Sunni Islam, and Early Modernity

Many an Ottoman thought that a new age had started in the late sixteenth century with the Islamic Millennium—if not before. Some of them dared writing books with titles that proclaimed this age ripe for a New Report as prophetic reports failed to explain its findings. Others even called for the need to learn Latin rather than Arabic as Western Europeans had surpassed the Ottomans in sciences for they were not restricted by religion. Thus, questioning the received traditions of the past and a belief in the superiority of the present, which are modern attitudes, were features of this new era for some Ottomans. There were, however, also many, who argued that every passing year was taking them further away from the perfection of the golden age of Islam, which they should do their best to revert to. The latter, though, were as modern as the former for they, too, were questioning the received traditions of their medieval past. The Muslim revivalists who aimed at eradicating innovations from socio-religious practices in the early modern era were engaged in an attempt to rationalize their faith by disenchanting it.

I suggest “enchantment” as a term to describe the transformation of Sufism from ascetic practices in order to discipline the self to an experiential quest that aims at unveiling the divide between the believer and the divine in this world. Very roughly speaking, while the medieval period witnessed the enchantment of Sufism and the acceptance of this development by Sunni Islam, the early modern era is marked by its disenchantment. The medieval transformation of Sufism from asceticism to an experiential quest for the divine had been noted and criticized by Muslim thinkers like Ibn Taymiyya. Even though often portrayed as a vehement critic of Sufism, Ibn Taymiyya could well have been a Sufi himself in the Qadiri order and yet understood Sufism quite differently than Ibn Arabi, whose writings produced the idea of the “unity of existence” that theorized the blurred boundaries between the Creator and the creature, making the former more accessible in this world. This kind of Sufism that aimed at unveiling was also criticized by Ibn Khaldun, who declared it not to be Sufism. Yet the Ottoman political enterprise grew in Anatolia, arguably the most enchanted land of the medieval Islamic world where Ibn Arabi taught Sadreddin Konevi, Rumi was joined by Shams Tabrizi, and the first historians of the Ottomans made Edebali, a Sufi sheikh, promise a world empire to Osman, the founder of the dynasty.

Several studies demonstrate that enchanted Sufism was quite well integrated into the social experience of Sunni Islam in the feudal period of Ottoman history (ca. 1300–1453) and also facilitated the conversion of many a local Christian. The early Ottoman structures of Muslim worship accommodated Sunni canonical rituals as well as Sufi ceremonies with singing and dancing. The first professors of Ottoman colleges of law and the early muftis of Ottoman capital cities were scholars of jurisprudence and ardent readers of Ibn Arabi at the same time. Akşemseddin, the Bayrami sheikh who was close to Mehmed II and took part in the siege of Constantinople, was a similar scholar- Sufi. Soon after the conquest, however, he left the new imperial capital.

The First Ottoman Empire (ca. 1453–1580) that was marked by the political domination of the dynasty through its military slaves of local Christian origin witnessed a growing emphasis on the legal institutions of Islam that was paralleled by the gradual exclusion of Sufi practices from places of worship, the architecture of which reflected this change by discontinuing the T-shaped mosques. Sünbül Sinan had a hard time arguing the legitimacy of Sufi rituals that involved singing and dancing, which had to move away from mosques to convents. While the transformation of the Safavis from a Sufi order to a political enterprise that challenged the Ottomans in eastern Anatolia definitely had a role in this development, a more significant and less obvious factor was the question of authority. In an empire governed...