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DYNASTY, LAW, AND THE IMPERIAL PROVINCIAL MADRASA: THE CASE OF AL-MADRASA AL-ʿUTHMANIYYA IN OTTOMAN JERUSALEM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2013

Guy Burak
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Abstract

This study looks at the history of two madrasas in Jerusalem, al-Madrasa al-ʿUthmaniyya and al-Madrasa al-Fanariyya from the 15th to the 18th centuries, in order to examine an understudied Ottoman institution: the imperial provincial madrasa. The imperial madrasas were assigned to the state-appointed Hanafi muftis of different localities across the empire. This essay argues that these learning institutions helped to consolidate the connection between the Ottoman dynasty, its appointed jurisconsults, and its broader imperial learned hierarchy. Beyond revealing some of its important institutional aspects, examining the imperial provincial madrasa casts light on the doctrinal role the Ottoman dynasty assumed in regulating the content of Hanafi jurisprudence that members of the imperial learned hierarchy were to apply. This role and the connections between the dynasty and its appointed jurisconsults had important effects within the diverse legal landscape of the empire, where multiple Sunni (especially Hanafi) legal and scholarly traditions coexisted. In further analyzing the identity of the endowers of these imperial madrasas, the article opens up new avenues for exploring how the Ottoman dynasty was defined in different contexts.

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International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , February 2013, pp. 111 - 125
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

This study explores some aspects of the connection between the Ottoman dynasty and Islamic law by examining an understudied institution, the imperial provincial madrasa. These madrasas, which were endowed in urban centers throughout the empire, usually by members or servants of the Ottoman dynasty, were assigned to the state-appointed jurisconsults (muftis) of different localities and provinces. Physically, the madrasas inscribed into the Ottoman urban fabric the connection between the Ottoman dynasty and its appointed jurisconsults; exploring this imperial practice reveals much about the articulation of Islamic law in the Ottoman context.

The emergence of the imperial provincial madrasas along with the practice of appointing jurisconsults was part of the Ottoman dynasty's development of an imperial learned hierarchy. Starting in the second third of the 15th century, Ottoman sultans, through a series of imperial edicts and regulations, organized and regulated a learned hierarchy (or a religious-judicial establishment) with clearly defined career and training tracks. The graduates of these tracks served as bureaucrats, judges, madrasa professors, and muftis. While the institutional and administrative dimensions of the emergence of the learned hierarchy have been studied extensively, its doctrinal implications have received considerably less scholarly attention.Footnote 1 On a doctrinal level, the Ottoman development of an imperial learned hierarchy—and, equally important, of the practice of appointing jurisconsults—allowed the sultan to intervene in an unprecedented manner in the regulation of the content of Islamic law. As some jurists who were not affiliated with the official hierarchy astutely observed, through its learned hierarchy, the Ottoman dynasty intended to limit the range of opinions within the Sunni Hanafi legal school that members of the imperial learned hierarchy were to apply.

The development of a learned hierarchy was of great importance in the context of the expanding empire, especially following the conquest of the Sunni territories of eastern Anatolia in the second half of the 15th century and of the Arab provinces in 1516 and 1517. The incorporation of these provinces into the Ottoman domains created a diverse legal landscape in which multiple Islamic Sunni scholarly and legal traditions coexisted. Against this backdrop, the Ottoman dynasty and the jurists who were affiliated with it strove to emphasize their mutual connection and to clearly draw the boundaries of the learned hierarchy in order to exclude other jurists and scholars who operated throughout the empire, especially those who followed branches of the Hanafi school that were not officially endorsed by the Ottoman state. From the 16th century on, however, especially in the Arab provinces, the imperial learned hierarchy did appoint local jurists to various positions, such as deputy judges and, as we shall see, provincial muftis.Footnote 2

This article examines the imperial provincial madrasa by looking at the history of the institution in Jerusalem. In some significant ways, the Jerusalemite madrasa, which was known since at least the late 15th century as al-Madrasa al-ʿUthmaniyya, differed from other imperial provincial madrasas. First, while most such madrasas were founded after the Ottoman conquest of a province, al-Madrasa al-ʿUthmaniyya was founded before Jerusalem came under Ottoman rule in 1516, though it was not part of the Ottoman enterprise and did not enjoy any special status in the city during the preconquest period. Second, unlike their counterparts in the core lands of the empire, the professors of al-Madrasa al-ʿUthmaniyya, who also served as the state-appointed Hanafi muftis of Jerusalem from the late 16th century onward, were not graduates of the imperial hierarchy's educational system, were not considered full members of that hierarchy, and could not reach its most senior ranks.

Despite these differences, the history of al-Madrasa al-ʿUthmaniyya reflects certain patterns that are discernible across the empire, from the Hijaz to the Balkans, and may help clarify how the Ottoman dynasty envisioned its connection with the jurists and jurisconsults it appointed, even when these were not graduates of the learned hierarchy's educational system. Key in this respect is the identity of the different madrasas’ endowers. Even a cursory examination of the founders of these imperial learning institutions indicates that, from the late 15th century, their identities were a major concern of the Ottoman dynasty. It seems that this concern shaped the decision of the 16th-century Ottoman rulers of Jerusalem on which of the two existing institutions would become the city's imperial provincial madrasa. But unlike most other imperial provincial madrasas across the Balkans, Anatolia, and the Arab lands, which were founded by members of the Ottoman dynasty (usually the sultan or his mother), the 15th-century endower of al-Madrasa al-ʿUthmaniyya was an elite woman from the Ottoman lands who had married into the famous Çandarlı family of prominent viziers. Since the wāqif was a free woman who was not a descendent of the Ottoman eponym Osman or married to one of his descendants, the new rulers of the city had to articulate her affiliation to the dynasty in the 16th century.Footnote 3

The history of the appropriation of al-Madrasa al-ʿUthmaniyya as an Ottoman imperial institution must bring into the account another institution in Jerusalem, al-Madrasa al-Fanariyya, which was endowed roughly around the same time by a high-ranking 15th-century Ottoman subject: Mulla Şemseddin Fenari (or Shams al-Din Muhammad b. Hamza b. Muhammad al-Fanari, 1350–1431), the first jurist to hold the title of the şeyhülislam of the Ottoman lands (between 1424 and 1431)Footnote 4 and the ancestor of many influential members of the learned hierarchy in the later 15th and 16th centuries. Although Fenari was appointed to his office by the Ottoman dynasty, the recognition of the ʿUthmaniyya as the provincial imperial madrasa seems to suggest that the Ottoman rulers were looking for an institution whose endower had a particular type of affiliation with the dynasty.

In the next two sections of this article I narrate the history of the two Jerusalem madrasas from their foundation in the 15th century through the 18th century. The first section is dedicated to the preconquest period and the second to the centuries following the Ottoman conquest. The third section turns to the institution of the state-appointed jurisconsult, examining the connection between these jurisconsults and the Ottoman dynasty. The fourth section returns to the question of how the endowers of the imperial provincial madrasas were affiliated with the Ottoman dynasty and the ways in which this particular notion of affiliation shaped, in certain contexts, the dynasty's boundaries.

TWO ENDOWMENTS IN 15TH-CENTURY JERUSALEM

Al-Madrasa al-Fanariyya

In 1419, returning from his pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, Mulla Şemseddin Fenari spent some time in Jerusalem, then part of the Mamluk sultanate (1250–1517). During his sojourn in the city, he decided to purchase a madrasa that had been founded on the northern portico of al-Haram al-Sharif by one of the city's notables, Shihab al-Din Ahmad b. al-Nasiri Muhammad al-Tuluni al-Zahiri, and later had been handed over to other members of the Mamluk elite, including the Mamluk sultan al-Malik al-Zahir Barquq (d. 1399). When the latter's son, al-Malik al-Nasir Faraj, died, the original founder's son decided to sell the madrasa to Fenari.Footnote 5 The madrasa (which is no longer extant) subsequently became known as al-Madrasa al-Fanariyya after its new owner.Footnote 6 In 1430, soon after his return to Bursa from a second pilgrimage to the Hijaz, Şemseddin Fenari endowed the revenues of four villages in the environs of the city of Kütahya to support the Jerusalem madrasa he had purchased more than a decade earlier.

In his endowment deed, Fenari specified the salaries of its office holders, appointed himself as guardian of the endowment for the rest of his life, and stipulated that his brother Mulla ʿİsa Bey b. Mulla Hamza b. Mehmed should replace him in this position. After ʿİsa Bey's death, Şemseddin's son, Yusuf Bali, was to serve as the guardian, and after his death, the guardianship was to pass to his sons.Footnote 7 It is noteworthy that Fenari did not link this endowment in any way to the Ottoman state or dynasty, which suggests that the endowment was a personal one whose administration was fully entrusted to the individuals specified by the endower.

Little is known about the professors of the Fanariyya madrasa in the 15th century; it is quite possible that members of the Fenari family appointed at least some of them. ʿAli b. Muhammad, known as Qara ʿAli al-ʿAjami (d. in Mecca in 1479), was a student of Nasir al-Din Muhammad Shah b. al-Fanari (d. 1522), Şemseddin Fenari's grandson and a senior member of the evolving Ottoman imperial learned hierarchy. When al-ʿAjami decided to leave the Ottoman lands for Jerusalem he was appointed to the professorship of the Fanariyya madrasa.Footnote 8 His studies with Nasir al-Din may have been the main reason for his appointment. One of Qara ʿAli al-ʿAjami's successors was Shams al-Din Abu ʿAbd Allah Muhammad b. Badr al-Din Mahmud al-Hanafi (d. in Jerusalem in 1491), who arrived in Jerusalem at some point from an unspecified place, possibly from the Ottoman domains. It is possible that he, too, studied with one of Fenari's descendants, who then appointed him to the professorship.Footnote 9

Al-Madrasa al-ʿUthmaniyya

In 1436/37, several years after Fenari endowed his madrasa, the construction of another madrasa was completed in Mamluk Jerusalem. Known since at least the late 15th century as al-Madrasa al-ʿUthmaniyya and situated on the western portico of the Haram, this madrasa was endowed by, in the words of the Mamluk chronicler Mujir al-Din al-ʿUlaymi (d. ca. 1521), “a woman [from] a great [family] in Rum [min akābīr al-rūm], whose name was Isfahan Shah Khatun, known as Khanum.”Footnote 10 Although Mamluk and Ottoman sources provide interesting information about Isfahan Shah Khatun, she has not been fully identified in modern histories of Mamluk and Ottoman Jerusalem.

Michael Burgoyne and Max van Bercham, in their studies of the madrasa, relied on al-ʿUlaymi's account and the inscription on the madrasa for identifying Isfahan Shah Khatun.Footnote 11 Independently, in his seminal study of the famous Çandarlı family of viziers, İsmail Hakki Uzunçarşılı noticed the existence of a madrasa in Jerusalem that was endowed by a female member of the family named Isfahan Shah Khatun. His source was apparently the endowment deed, which is now located at the Prime Ministry Archives in Istanbul, but he did not consult the inscription or al-ʿUlaymi's account. Uzunçarşılı also did not identify the endowed madrasa as al-ʿUthmaniyya. This section intends to bring the endowment deed, the inscription, and al-ʿUlaymi's account into dialogue in order to produce a fuller picture of Isfahan Shah Khatun's identity. As I hope to demonstrate in this essay, clarifying this issue is key for understanding the history of the madrasa in the decades and centuries following the Ottoman conquest of the city.

Mujir al-Din al-ʿUlaymi's statement, which I cited previously, was apparently based on the inscription on the madrasa:

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. The construction of this blessed madrasa was ordered by the noble and honorable Lady Isfahan Shah Khatun, the daughter of the late Amir Mahmud, al-ʿUthmaniyya, known as Khanum (may God show her His benevolence). She passed away in the year 840 [1436–37 ce]. Its construction was completed at the close of the aforementioned year through the efforts of Khawaja Jamiʿ, son of Sati, from Asia Minor [al-rūmī].Footnote 12

The inscription, which constitutes the only extant text Isfahan Shah Khatun and, most probably, someone close to her (perhaps her son or the overseer of the construction) commissioned in a Mamluk territory, thus reveals the name of the endower, her death date, the title/profession of her father, and his name. In the inscription, Isfahan Shah Khatun is said to be ʿuthmāniyya, an epithet (nisba) that indicates the endower was a descendent of or otherwise related to someone named ʿUthman, a point to which we will return.

The endowment deed (waqfiyya) was written during Isfahan Shah Khatun's lifetime and is roughly contemporary with the inscription on the madrasa.Footnote 13 In the archived deed, which seems to constitute the bulk though not the entirety of the original, the endower identifies herself as the daughter of the deceased Edebali (d. ca. 1326).Footnote 14 She also mentions that she is the mother of Mahmud Çelebi, who is the son of İbrahim Paşa and the grandson of Hayrüddin Paşa. As both Uzunçarşılı and Münir Aktepe point out, İbrahim Paşa and Hayrüddin Paşa were members of the famous 15th-century Çandarlı family of viziers. Isfahan Shah Khatun was the mother of all of Çandarlı İbrahim Paşa's sons, save his eldest, Halil Paşa.Footnote 15

Identifying Isfahan Shah Khatun's father is more complicated. In the endowment deed, she identifies herself as the “daughter of Edebali” (which could mean the descendant of Edebali). The inscription in Jerusalem provides two additional clues, naming the endower as “Isfahan Shah Khatun, al-ʿUthmaniyya, the daughter of Amir Mahmud.” The identification of her father as “amir” suggests that he was a military/administrative figure, perhaps the equivalent of the Turkish title “paşa.” In any case, her father was a certain Mahmud, who was a descendent of Edebali, the father-in-law of the first Ottoman sultan, Osman, and a famous religious figure in western Anatolia in the late 13th and early 14th centuries.

The published late 15th- and early 16th-century taḥrīr registers of the liva of Hüdavendigar may assist us in reconstructing the lineage leading from Edebali to Mahmud and then to Isfahan Shah Khatun. The registers record those who were the beneficiaries of the endowment of Edebali's Sufi lodge (zāviye). Edebali's son Mahmud followed in his father's footsteps and became the shaykh of the lodge, as did Mahmud's son Mehmet. Then the registers record two individuals, Paşa and Mahmud.Footnote 16 It is quite likely that this second Mahmud was Mehmet's son, Edebali's great-grandson, and Isfahan Shah Khatun's father; he does not appear as the shaykh of the lodge, in contrast to his ancestors. The inscription in the madrasa supports such a professional shift, as Isfahan Shah Khatun's father is said to be an amir, that is, a military/administrative official, rather than a shaykh.

The fact that Isfahan Shah Khatun identifies herself in the inscription as affiliated to the Edebali and not the Çandarlı lineage is noteworthy. In the endowment deed, by contrast, although she mentions her ancestor Edebali, she seems to place greater emphasis on her affiliation to the Çandarlı family.Footnote 17 At any rate, the association of Isfahan Shah Khatun and her endowment with the Çandarlı family and possibly with Edebali, as we shall see, would play a decisive role in the madrasa's history in the postconquest period.

The epithet “al-ʿUthmaniyya” that appears in the inscription on the madrasa raises several questions that can be only partially answered at this point. In his study of the madrasa, Michael Burgoyne translated the epithet as “Ottoman.” Yet in the 15th century, Ottoman subjects who were not members of the House of Osman (the Turkish form of ʿUthman) usually did not identify themselves as ʿUthmani. Nor was the nisba ʿUthmani used to refer to the Ottoman lands in Mamluk or early Ottoman sources, which usually employed the more general term Rumi.Footnote 18 Moreover, Isfahan Shah Khatun does not identify herself in the endowment deed, in which she mentions her ancestors, as ʿUthmaniyya, and the appellation al-ʿUthmani is not attached to Edebali, Isfahan Shah Khatun's ancestor.Footnote 19 Perhaps this is an extremely rare instance of the use of the epithet ʿUthmani to denote origins from the Ottoman domains, but it is also possible that the endower was a descendant of an unknown ʿUthman.

Isfahan Shah Khatun's ties with the Çandarlı family determined the endowment's future guardians. In the deed, she appointed herself as the mutawallī (guardian/administrator) of the endowment for the rest of her life, after which her son Çandarlı Mahmud Çelebi was to be appointed. Upon the latter's death, the guardianship of the endowment would be passed down to members of the Çandarlı family and their household. To be more precise, as long as there were members of the Çandarlı lineage, “the most righteous and pious of them should be the guardian,” and after the last member of the family perished, the guardianship would be transferred to their manumitted slaves. It is not fully clear to what extent Isfahan Shah Khatun's stipulations were kept. A 16th-century register indicates that a certain Mahmud Çelebi, possibly her son or another of her descendants, was appointed as the guardian after her death and that he sent funds from Anatolia to the madrasa.Footnote 20

Isfahan Shah Khatun's endowment was a fairly modest one. Although five salaried positions are stipulated in the surviving parts of the endowment deed, these salaries are significantly lower than those specified by other contemporary elite endowers, such as Fenari. The professor (mudarris) of the ʿUthmaniyya madrasa received a daily salary of six akçe, compared to fifteen dirhams (akçes) allocated for the professor of the Fanariyya madrasa.Footnote 21 The salary for teaching positions in madrasas established by Ottoman sultans was even higher: for example, the daily salary of ʿAlaʾ al-Din ʿAli al-Tusi, who was appointed by Murad II as the professor of the madrasa of Mehmet I in Bursa, is said to have been fifty akçes.Footnote 22

Isfahan Shah Khatun endowed the revenues of ten villages in Anatolia to support her madrasa.Footnote 23 It is unclear how she came to possess all of these lands: it is possible that she inherited some of them from her father; at least one was the property of the Çandarlı family and was granted to her as milk (or mülk).Footnote 24 She may also have bought some of them with her own money. In any case, by the late 15th century, in addition to the endowed villages in Anatolia, the madrasa had a smaller endowment in Palestine. It is unclear whether Isfahan Shah Khatun was involved in the acquisition of the Palestinian endowment; it may have occurred after her death in 1436 or 1437.

The self-identification of Isfahan Shah Khatun and the stipulation she made in her waqfiyya are crucial for assessing her intentions and particularly for understanding whether she envisioned her endowment as part of the evolving Ottoman enterprise. The inscription on the madrasa is remarkably modest, merely stating her name, her father's name, the date of her death, and the name of the construction supervisor. Although the adjectives “honorable” and “noble” are attached to her name, nothing suggests that the endowment was part of the interdynastic rivalry between the Mamluks and the Ottomans or between the Ottoman and other 15th-century dynasties. The silence of most Ottoman and Mamluk sources about this endowment warrants attention. Contemporary Ottoman sources mention the sultans’ charitable deeds both within the Ottoman domains and elsewhere: for example, the 15th-century Ottoman chroniclers ʿAsikpaşazade and Neşri mention funds (ṣurre) that Ottoman sultans sent to Jerusalem and Hebron, in addition to money sent to Mecca and Medina.Footnote 25 The fact that the madrasa is not mentioned in these sources suggests that Isfahan Shah Khatun's endowment was not associated with the Ottoman dynasty.

Likewise, Mamluk chroniclers pay little attention to the madrasa. The only Mamluk source that mentions Isfahan Shah Khatun and the ʿUthmaniyya madrasa, al-ʿUlaymi's chronicle, does not provide any information concerning her intentions or her relation to the Ottoman sultan/dynasty. As Max van Berchem proposed, the brevity and the vagueness of al-ʿUlaymi's descriptions may be attributed to the ongoing rivalry between the Mamluk and the Ottomans at the time. Another possibility is that the vagueness of the description relates to al-ʿUlaymi's unfamiliarity with Isfahan Shah Khatun. It is possible that he did not perceive the endowment of the madrasa in the context of an interdynastic rivalry but as a quite ordinary act of personal piety, similar to those the inhabitants of Jerusalem had been witnessing for centuries.

Isfahan Shah Khatun's endowment indeed followed an established pattern: an examination of the institutions endowed by foreigners in Mamluk Jerusalem during the century or so that precedes her waqf in the city reveals that, with the exception of Fenari's endowment, the other four institutions were endowed by elite women from outside the Mamluk sultanate.Footnote 26 While five cases are not sufficient for pointing to a clear trend, it is interesting to entertain the possibility that in the 14th and early 15th centuries there was a shared practice among Anatolian, Jalairid, and Timurid elite women of manifesting piety by endowing specifically in Jerusalem. Some of these women, including perhaps Isfahan Shah Khatun, immigrated to the city and died there.Footnote 27 This gendered perception of piety may have been one reason Sultan Süleyman's favorite and wife, Hürrem Sultan, decided to build a soup kitchen (imāret) in the city in the 16th century. But unlike Hürrem, it is fairly clear that Isfahan Shah Khatun did not associate her madrasa with the Ottoman dynasty.

Not much is known about the history of the ʿUthmaniyya in the 15th century. Apparently, it became a center for the Rumi (Anatolian) scholarly community in Jerusalem in the first decades after its foundation, although the extant sources do not specify that it was intended to exclusively serve Rumi scholars. As we have seen, the inscription on the madrasa indicates that “Khawaja Jamiʿ, son of Sati, from Asia Minor [al-rūmī],” oversaw its construction. It is possible that the khawāja was sent from the Ottoman lands for this purpose. Another possibility is that he was already a resident of Jerusalem and was hired as overseer because of his Anatolian origin. Another Rumi, Siraj al-Din Siraj b. Musafir al-Rumi al-Hanafi (d. 1460), was appointed as the “shaykh,” probably the professor, of the madrasa. Siraj al-Din was born in Anatolia in 1392 and arrived in Jerusalem in 1424. He resigned, according to al-ʿUlaymi, when he found out that the endower had stipulated that the professor should be “the most knowledgeable of his time,” claiming that he did not fulfill this requirement.Footnote 28 Siraj al-Din's successor, Jamal al-Din b. Sharaf al-Din al-Rumi (d. 1475), who apparently did think he was qualified for this office, was also, as the nisba attached to his name indicates, of Anatolian descent. It is clear that Jamal al-Din was not born in Jerusalem, since al-ʿUlaymi claims that he did not read Arabic well.Footnote 29 Despite the Anatolian origins of at least some of the professors, it is worth reiterating that there is no evidence to suggest that members of the Ottoman ruling and religious-judicial elites were interested in the madrasa in the period prior to the Ottoman conquest of the city.

THE POSTCONQUEST HISTORY OF THE MADRASAS

When Ottoman troops conquered Jerusalem in the fall of 1516 there were thus two learning institutions that had been founded by members of the ruling and judicial elites of the Ottoman polity. During the 16th century, while members of the Ottoman ruling elite undertook several charitable projects in the city, most notably, Hürrem Sultan's soup kitchen, members of the dynasty did not found any new learning institutions in Jerusalem.Footnote 30 Instead, in the late 16th century, they assigned the ʿUthmaniyya madrasa to the state-appointed Hanafi mufti of Jerusalem. By that time, the practice of assigning a madrasa founded by a member of the dynasty (or one of its servants) to the state-appointed jurisconsult was already in place in the empire.

Although in the 16th century (and later) descendants of both endowers were still alive, and despite the endowers’ stipulations in their endowment deeds, the Ottoman conquest apparently changed to some degree the administration of the two madrasas.Footnote 31 In the 16th century (and later) their professors played a more prominent role in the administration of the endowments and perhaps were even considered the de facto guardians.Footnote 32 It is unclear who administered the institutions’ endowments in Anatolia in the 16th century; they may have been administered by Ottoman state officials.Footnote 33

Relatively little is known about the history of the Fanariyya madrasa after the conquest. It appears that in the early 16th century at least some of its positions were reserved exclusively for scholars from the core lands of the empire (Rum). The chief military justice of Anatolia (kadıasker), for example, issued an edict that the reciter of the Qurʾan in the Fanariyya must have Rumi origin.Footnote 34 It is unclear whether Rumis remained the reciters in the madrasa in later decades, though later chronicles do not mention such a stipulation. As to the professors, from the scattered information provided in biographical dictionaries from the 16th to the 18th centuries, it seems that during this period they were not from the core lands of the empire: Ahmad b. Ahmad Shihab al-Din al-Baji al-Antaki (d. 1533), one of the madrasa's professors after the conquest, had served as a judge in Mardin under the Turkmen Akkoyunlu dynasty before he left for the Mamluk lands and eventually settled in Jerusalem.Footnote 35 In the early 18th century, ʿAli b. Habib Allah b. Muhammad b. Nur Allah b. Abi al-Lutf, the state-appointed Shafiʿi mufti of Jerusalem, was assigned the professorship of the madrasa.Footnote 36 Other teachers in the madrasa during the 18th century were the shaykh of the Haram, Fadl Allah Efendi, and several members of the Jaʿuni family.Footnote 37 In other words, the professorship of the madrasa was assigned to scholars of different backgrounds. In a similar vein, in the first decades after the conquest and until the late 16th century, the professorship of the ʿUthmaniyya madrasa was allocated to different jurists. According to Burgoyne, a 16th-century court record suggests that at times the position was even divided between two jurists and was not reserved exclusively for Hanafi scholars.Footnote 38

Toward the end of the 16th century the pattern of appointing professors to al-Madrasa al-ʿUthmaniyya changed significantly: from then on, the teaching position at the madrasa was attached to the position of the state-appointed Hanafi mufti of the city. As the Jerusalemite family Banu Abi al-Lutf came to monopolize the muftiship of Jerusalem during this time, its members also dominated the professorship of al-Madrasa al-ʿUthmaniyya.Footnote 39 Al-Madrasa al-ʿUthmaniyya was now the imperial provincial madrasa of Jerusalem and not merely a learning institution endowed as an act of personal piety of an elite woman.

THE PROVINCIAL STATE-APPOINTED MUFTI AND THE PROVINCIAL IMPERIAL MADRASA

The assignment of al-Madrasa al-ʿUthmaniyya to the state-appointed mufti of Jerusalem provides an opportunity to examine the connection between the Ottoman dynasty and its appointed jurisconsults across the empire. Starting in the second third of the 15th century, as part of the development of an imperial religious-judicial establishment, jurists were increasingly appointed to serve as muftis of specific localities and provinces (although the position was usually defined as the muftiship of a city: the mufti of Amasya, Damascus, Jerusalem, and so on). Each province, including the imperial capital, had a single state-appointed Hanafi jurisconsult. From the mid-16th century on, when the learned hierarchy was officially presided over by the chief imperial mufti (the şeyhülislam), the provincial state-appointed muftis became his subordinates. The 17th-century historian and encyclopedist Hezarfen Hüseyin Efendi dedicated a section of his Telḥisüʾl-Beyan fi Kevanin-i Al-i Osman to the taxonomy of muftis in the empire: “A mufti might be the şeyhülislam, or he might not. Those who are not the şeyhülislam are the provincial muftis [kenār müftīleri].”Footnote 40 Because the latter's rank was lower, explains Hezarfen, they were required to mention the authoritative text (nuḳūl) they used for each ruling, whereas the chief mufti was not expected to do so.Footnote 41 The anonymous author of Hırzüʾl-Müluk, a treatise written in the late 16th century or early 17th century that focused on the structure of the Ottoman state and its institutions, provides additional information about the history of the practice of appointing muftis in specific localities, stating that its purpose was to facilitate the access of the empire's provincial subjects to a state-appointed mufti who could issue authoritative rulings. Later, in the author's time, the primary role of the provincial mufti was “to act as a check on oppressive officials and ignorant judges, who do not follow the rules of the shariʿa.”Footnote 42

In any case, the Ottoman practice of appointing muftis marked a radical break from the understanding of the institution of the mufti in classical Sunni jurisprudence as well as from the practice prevalent in the pre-Ottoman Arab Middle East. In the late Mamluk sultanate, for example, muftis (with the exception of the mufti of the Hall of Justice) were not appointed by the state. Instead, any jurist who was granted the permit to teach law and issue legal rulings (ijāza fī al-tadrīs wa-l-iftāʾ) was considered a mufti.Footnote 43 Within the Ottoman learned hierarchy, by contrast, the mufti became a state office, and only jurists who held an official appointment could issue rulings.

The main reason for this institutional transformation of the institution of the mufti seems to have been the growing interest of the Ottoman sultans and the dynasty in regulating the content of Hanafi jurisprudence that members of the imperial learned hierarchy were to apply. As the Damascene jurist ʿAbd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (d. 1731) pointed out, by appointing jurisconsults, the Ottoman dynasty sought to specify a set of legal arguments and opinions out of a wider range of available opinions within the Hanafi tradition.Footnote 44 In other words, the institutional transformation of the muftiship and the connection between the state-appointed muftis and the Ottoman dynasty had significant doctrinal and legal implications.

The teaching position attached to the provincial state-appointed muftiship helped to consolidate this connection between the Hanafi mufti and the House of Osman. Already in the second half of the 15th century, in the central Anatolian city of Amasya, the muftiship was attached to the professorship at the madrasa in the complex built by Sultan Bayezid II. In Rhodes, the state-appointed mufti held the professorship of the madrasa endowed by Sultan Süleyman, and in Manisa, another provincial capital, the muftiship was attached to the professorship at the madrasa endowed by Hafsa Sultan, Sultan Süleyman's mother. Even the chief muftiship of the empire (the office of the şeyhülislam) was attached to the madrasa established by Bayezid II in Istanbul. In other cases, the madrasa was endowed by one of the dynasty's servants. Such was the case of the madrasa in Sarajevo endowed by Hüsrev Bey (d. 1541), the governor of Bosnia, though even he was related to the Ottoman dynasty, as he was the grandson of Bayezid II (through the latter's daughter Selçuk Sultan).Footnote 45

As stated previously, from the late 16th century on, the state-appointed muftis in the Arab lands were different in certain respects from their counterparts in the core lands of the empire. In some cities, such as Damascus and Aleppo, in the immediate postconquest decades the state-appointed mufti had been a graduate of the imperial madrasa system and was sent from the capital; but starting in the late 16th century, local jurists replaced these “full members” of the learned hierarchy in this office. In other places, such as Mecca and Jerusalem, the jurisconsults were local jurists starting with the state's first appointment of a Hanafi mufti.Footnote 46 Despite differences in these local muftis’ training and background, there were some important similarities: they were all appointed by the state, and, in comparison to their non-appointed colleagues, they tended to be more attentive to particular legal arguments that the imperial hierarchy endorsed.Footnote 47

Their assignment to a madrasa endowed by a member or servant of the dynasty was another similarity: in Damascus and Mecca, the madrasas founded by Sultan Süleyman were attached to the provincial state-appointed Hanafi muftishipsFootnote 48; in Aleppo, the state-appointed Hanafi jurisconsult taught at the Khusrawiyya madrasa (completed in 1546), which was endowed by a graduate of the palace, a devşirme recruit, Divane Hüsrev Paşa.Footnote 49 This fairly clear imperial pattern invites the question: how does the Jerusalemite madrasa fit into it?

AFFILIATION WITH THE OTTOMAN DYNASTY

The new rulers of Jerusalem decided to turn the madrasa endowed by a member of the Çandarlı family into the city's imperial provincial madrasa. This decision may be explained by comparing the ʿUthmaniyya to the imperial provincial madrasas of Sarajevo and Aleppo. It seems that the main reason for the adoption of Isfahan Shah Khatun's madrasa was that the Çandarlıs were considered part of the Ottoman dynasty or, at least, its loyal servants, much like Hüsrev Paşa, the endower of the Khusrawiyya of Aleppo. The family's service aside, it was also connected to the Ottoman dynasty through marriage. Çandarlı Mahmud Çelebi, who served as the sancakbey of Bolu, married Sultan Mehmet I's (d. 1421) daughter Hafsa Hatun and was Sultan Murad II's brother-in-law.Footnote 50 Moreover, although Isfahan Shah Khatun was not related to the Ottoman dynasty through blood or marriage ties, her ancestor, Edebali, was the father-in-law of the first Ottoman sultan, Osman. In this respect, the endower of the madrasa of Jerusalem resembled Hüsrev Bey of Sarajevo.

The Fenaris and other members of the imperial establishment, by contrast, lacked this type of affiliation with the Ottoman dynasty. This is not to imply that they were not loyal subjects and servants. In fact, their position as members of the imperial learned hierarchy in the complex legal landscape of the expanding 16th-century empire depended to a large extent on their connections with the dynasty. But what the decision to adopt the ʿUthmaniyya as the imperial provincial madrasa suggests is that when the Ottoman sultans sought to define the boundaries of the dynasty, at least for certain purposes, members of the imperial learned hierarchy remained outside it.

There may have been other reasons for the adoption of the ʿUthmaniyya madrasa. Members of the Fenari family held senior positions within the imperial learned hierarchy well into the 16th century (and beyond): Nasir al-Din, for example, was the military justice who accompanied Sultan Selim I on his campaign to the Arab lands in 1516 and 1517. Another of Şemseddin Fenari's grandsons, Fenarizade Muhyiddin Efendi, was appointed as the şeyhülislam in 1543.Footnote 51 Although the family lost much of its power in the second half of the 16th century, it was still known as one of the most prominent families in the ranks of the Ottoman learned hierarchy. Moreover, it appears that at least some members of the learned hierarchy considered the family to be a distinctive group within it. In the biographical dictionary in which he focused on 16th-century members of the imperial religious-judicial establishment, ʿAşik Çelebi (d. 1571) refers to “the party [or faction] of the descendants of Fenari” (ṭāʾifat awlād al-fanārī),Footnote 52 which seems to indicate that the family promoted the collective interests of its members. In comparison to the Çandarlı family, whose power had waned by the 16th century, the Fenaris were still influential. Furthermore, as we have seen, it is possible that as late as the last decades of the 15th century, members of the Fenari family still appointed jurists as professors at the madrasa. In that case, the adoption of the ʿUthmaniyya may have been used to stress the superior position of the Ottoman sultan and the dynasty as the ultimate regulators of the hierarchy vis-à-vis the jurists who were affiliated with them.

CONCLUSION

The histories of the ʿUthmaniyya and Fanariyya madrasas in Jerusalem shed light on significant aspects of the history of the Ottoman institution of the provincial imperial madrasa, the provincial state-appointed Hanafi muftiship, and, more generally, the imperial learned hierarchy. They capture the growing interest of Ottoman dynasts from the 15th century on in regulating the content of Hanafi jurisprudence that members of the imperial learned hierarchy were to apply across the empire. In this context, the imperial provincial madrasas served to cement and propagate the connection between the Ottoman dynasty and the state-appointed muftis and between the dynasty and certain opinions and legal arguments within the Sunni Hanafi tradition. This connection between the dynasty and its jurists was of critical importance within the diverse legal and scholarly landscape of the empire.

As the case of Jerusalem demonstrates, the study of the imperial provincial madrasas offers a new historiographical angle on the boundaries of the House of Osman. It suggests that these boundaries were selectively expanded, for different purposes, by incorporating families and individuals who married into the Ottoman dynasty (and not only the sultans and their mothers) or, in some cases, were its servants. As Isfahan Shah Khatun's madrasa was incorporated into the network of imperial provincial madrasas over the course of the 16th century, her apparent original intentions were downplayed in favor of the interests of the Ottoman dynasty and its imperial enterprise.

Footnotes

Ibid.
Ibid.

References

NOTES

Author's note: I thank Heath Lowry, Hasan Karataş, Amy Singer, Hana Taragan, Ayelet Zoran-Rosen, the anonymous reviewers, and the editors for their invaluable comments and suggestions. I dedicate this article to Leslie Peirce.

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3 The case study of al-Madrasa al-ʿUthmaniyya is also pertinent to the literature on women's charitable activity in the Ottoman and other Islamic societies. On this activity in the early modern Ottoman context, see Baer, Gabriel, “Women and Waqf: An Analysis of the Istanbul Tahrîr of 1546,” Asian and African Studies 17 (1983): 9–27Google Scholar; Meriwether, Margaret L., “Women and Waqf Revisited: The Case of Aleppo, 1770–1840,” in Women in the Ottoman Empire: Middle Eastern Women in the Early Modern Era, ed. Zilfi, Madeline C. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997), 128–52Google Scholar; Singer, Amy, Constructing Ottoman Beneficence: An Imperial Soup Kitchen in Jerusalem (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Thys-Senocak, Lucienne, Ottoman Women Builders: The Architectural Patronage of Hadice Turhan Sutlan (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006)Google Scholar; and Zarinebaf, Fariba, “Women, Patronage, and Charity in Ottoman Istanbul,” in Beyond the Exotic: Women's Histories in Islamic Societies, ed. el-Azhary Sonbol, Amira (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2006), 89–101.Google Scholar

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13 Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi, Ali Emiri Tasnifi I:9.

14 On Edebali, see Kamil Şahin, “Edebali,” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi (hereafter TDVİA).

15 HakkıUzunçarşılı, İsmail, Çandarlı Vezir Ailesi (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1998), 55Google Scholar; Münir Aktepe, “Çandarlı İbrahim Paşa,” TDVİA.

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17 Being a descendent of Edebali was still considered prestigious in the late 16th century. ʿAli Bey, a 16th-century shaykh, was also a member of the Edebali family. ʿAli Bey, it should be noted, girded Ahmed I's sword in the first recorded enthronement-related sword-girding ceremony in Ottoman history. Tezcan, Baki, The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 121.Google Scholar

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19 His full name as it appears in the biographical literature is ʿImadüddin Mustafa b. İbrahim b. Inac el-Kirşehiri. Şahin, “Edebali,” 393.

20 Burgoyne, Mamluk Jerusalem, 546. According to the family tree of the Çandarlı family reconstructed by İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, one of Mahmud's great-grandsons was also named Mahmud. It is possible that he was the guardian of the Anatolian endowment at some point in the 16th century. Uzunçarşılı, Çandarlı Vezir Ailesi, 112.

21 Bilge, İlk Osmanlı Medreseleri, 237.

22 Taşköprüzade, al-Shaqaʾiq al-Nuʿmaniyya, 60.

23 Seven of these villages were around Gerede, two around Hayrabolu, and one near Iznik.

24 Isfahan Shah Khatun received Kircahasan (in the environs of Bursa) as milk from her husband, Ibrahim Pasa. Uzunçarşılı, Çandarlı Vezir Ailesi, 55, n. 2.

25 Atalar, Münir, Osmanlı Devletinde Surre-i Hümayun ve Surre Alayları (Ankara: Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı Yayınları, 1991), 10–13.Google Scholar See also ʿAşikpaşazade, , Aṣikpaṣaoǧlu Tarihi (Istanbul: Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı Kitapları, 1970), 196Google Scholar; and Neşri, , Kitab-i Cihan-nüma (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1949–57), 2:678.Google Scholar

26 The earliest of these endowments is al-Khatuniyya madrasa (begun in 1354, completed in 1380). The builder of the madrasa was a certain Oghul Khatun from Baghdad. The construction of the madrasa was completed by another Isfahan Shah, the daughter of the amir Qazan Shah. It is possible, as Burgoyne suggested, that both builders were elite women in the Jalairid domains. Burgoyne, Mamluk Jerusalem, 343–55. The second endowment is al-Ribat al-Mardini (completed early in the 14th century). The founders of the hospice (ribat) are said to have been two freedwomen of the Artuqid ruler of Mardin, al-Salih b. Gazzi II (r. 1312–63). The ribat was intended to serve as a guesthouse for the pilgrims from Mardin to Jerusalem. Ibid., 412–14. Also around 1369, Safari Khatun, the wife of a merchant from Abivard (Khorasan), al-Khawaja ʿImad al-Din al-Bawardi, built another madrasa, which al-ʿUlaymi calls the Bawardiyya Madrasa. Ibid., 70; al-ʿUlaymi, al-Uns, 2:43–44. In addition to the madrasa, Safari Khatun erected a tomb for herself. The fourth endowment was another madrasa. Located at the northern border of the Haram between the Karimiyya madrasa and the minaret of Bab al-Absat, al-Madrasa al-Ghadiriyya (or al-Qadiriyya) was named after the amir Nasir al-Din Muhammad b. Ghars al-Din Khalil b. Zayn al-Din Qaraja Dhulghadir, a prince of the Turkmen dynasty of the Dhulghadirids (or Dhulqadirids), upon its completion in 1432, but the endowment had been initiated by his wife, Misr Khatun. Burgoyne, Mamluk Jerusalem, 526–33.

27 Al-ʿUlaymi states that Isfahan Shah Khatun is buried in the madrasa, although other contemporary sources are silent on this question. If she is indeed buried in the madrasa's premises, she probably left the Ottoman lands for Jerusalem at some point between 1429 and 1437. The fact that she identifies herself in the endowment deed as the mother of Mahmud Çelebi, and not as İbrahim Paşa's wife, may indicate that she endowed the lands in Anatolia after her husband's death in 1429 and moved to Jerusalem thereafter.

28 Al-ʿUlaymi, al-Uns, 2:228–29.

29 Ibid., 2:233.

30 On Hürrem Sultan and her soup kitchen, see Amy Singer, Constructing Ottoman Beneficence; and Peirce, Leslie P., The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 58–90.Google Scholar The only madrasa built by a member of the ruling elite was founded by Ahmad Paşa b. Ridwan Paşa b. Mustafa Paşa in 1604. Natsheh, Yusuf, “Catalogue of Buildings,” in Ottoman Jerusalem: A Living City, ed. Auld, Sylvia and Hillenbrand, Robert (London: Altajir World of Islam Trust, 2000), 2:851–57.Google Scholar

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32 In 1575, the Hanafi mudarris of the Fanariyya reported in court on the repairs recently conducted in the madrasa. Burgoyne, Mamluk Jerusalem, 70. As to the ʿUthmaniyya madrasa, in a mid-17th-century entry in the sijill of Jerusalem, the Hanafi mufti of the city, Jarallah (b. Abi al-Lutf) is explicitly mentioned as the supervisor of the madrasa's waqf. See Zeʾevi, Dror, An Ottoman Century: The District of Jerusalem in the 1600s (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1996), 50.Google Scholar In the 16th and 17th centuries, the professor of al-Madrasa al-Ghadiriyya served as the guardian of this endowment even though members of the Dhulghadir (or Dhulqadir) dynasty were still alive and seem to have been considered its titular overseers. The Ghadiriyya's waqf included properties in Aleppo and the district of Marʿash. Possibly the professor served as the “local guardian” when the endowed properties were scattered throughout different parts of the empire. On the Ghadiriyya madrasa in the Ottoman period see Burgoyne, Mamluk Jerusalem, 528.

33 On changes in the administration of endowments throughout the Arab lands in the 16th and 17th centuries, see Muhammad el-Zawahreh, Taisir Khalil, Religious Endowments and Social Life in the Ottoman Province of Damascus in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Karak: Publication of the Deanship of Research and Graduate Studies, Mutʿah University, 1995), 87–98Google Scholar; Behrens-Abouseif, Doris, Egypt's Adjustment to Ottoman Rule: Institutions, Waqf, and Architecture in Cairo (16th and 17th Centuries) (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), 145–58Google Scholar; and Jude Fitzgerald, Timothy, Ottoman Methods of Conquest: Legal Imperialism and the City of Aleppo, 1480–1570 (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2008), 232–46.Google Scholar

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46 For this reason, many of the imperial provincial madrasas of the Arab lands are absent from the biographical dictionaries, which are mostly devoted to “full members” of the hierarchy and graduates of its educational system. The Sulimaniyya madrasa in Damascus appears in these biographical dictionaries for as long as its muftis were graduates of the Ottoman madrasa system (i.e., until the late 16th century). But it is absent from dictionaries that document later centuries. Baltacı, XV–XVI. Osmanlı Medreseleri, 534–35.

47 Mundy and Samuarez Smith, Governing Property, 11–39; Burak, “The Abu Hanifah of His Time,” 370–96.

48 See, for example, the biographies of the state-appointed Hanafi muftis of the city in al-Muradi, Muhammad Khalil b. ʿAli, ʿUrf al-Basham fi man Waliya Fatwa al-Sham (Damascus: Dar Ibn Kathir, 1988).Google Scholar On the appointment of the Hanafi mufti of Mecca, see the account by the first appointed jurisconsult of the city, al-Makki, al-Shaykh Qutb al-Din al-Nahrawali, Kitab al-Iʿlam bi-Aʿlam Bayt Allah al-Haram (Beirut: Maktabat al-Khayats, 1964), 3:415–17.Google Scholar On the endowment in Damascus, see Kafescioğlu, Çiğdem, “‘In the Image of Rūm’: Ottoman Architectural Patronage in Sixteenth-Century Aleppo and Damascus,” Muqarnas 16 (1999): 86–87.Google Scholar

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50 Uzunçarsılı, Çandarlı Vezir Ailesi, 55.

51 Repp, The Müfti of Istanbul, 263–72.

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