The Qur'an between the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic

An Exegetical Tradition

Susan Gunasti

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367671716
• eBook ISBN: 9780429810022
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Qur'an between the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic is one of the few book-length studies on an Ottoman Qur'an commentary. Its premise is that "the Ottoman Empire" did not come to an end until 1950 so far as Islam was concerned in Turkey.

The work explores the relationship between Elmal?l?'s Qur'an commentary and the intellectual trends of the period, including the impact of materialism, the sciences, notions of civilizational progress, and philosophy. In doing so, this study emphasizes the "local" aspect of the Qur'an commentary, through a sustained focus on the Istanbul context in which it was written. This work demonstrates that Elmal?l?'s Qur'an commentary is a product of and reaction to the religious, intellectual, political, and social trends of the period. This work, in considering all the factors that led to the commissioning of Elmal?l?'s Qur'an commentary, also contributes to our understanding of the history of Islam in early to mid-twentieth-century Turkey.

This intellectual history of modern Islamic thought contributes to our understanding of the genre of Qur'an commentary in the early twentieth century. It is a key text for students and scholars interested in Islam in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, modern Islamic thought, and the Middle East.

1 A religious scholar’s life in a tumultuous period

In contemporary Turkey, Elmalılı (1878–1942) is viewed as a religious scholar who secured his reputation based on his writing a Qur’an commentary and translation. His republican legacy, however, bears only a distant resemblance to the man he was in the late Ottoman period: an eminent jurist; a leading member of the ulema; a public intellectual who offered insightful, yet sometimes biting, critiques on social, political, and religious issues; a politician who later veered into the camp of the opposition; a concerned citizen interested in the survival of the empire; and an engaged religious scholar. Elmalılı’s life coincided with the decline of Ottoman power vis-à-vis foreign powers, the rise of nationalist movements in its territories, large population dislocations and resettlements, the entry of the empire into the Great War, the dismemberment of the empire, the rise of a new republic, the abolition of the caliphate, the occupation of Muslim-majority areas by colonial powers, and the secularizing reforms of the elite during the early years of the Turkish republic.

Witnessing the end of an empire and the emergence of a new nation–state was not easy for Elmalılı—it was an event that he could not even conceive until it happened. Republican-era reforms led to the closure of the institutions that had formed the backbone of his identity and provided him with gainful employment, leaving him adrift in a new political and institutional landscape with no real opportunity for work. He became physically isolated from the outside world where all of the changes were taking place in the newly established Turkish nation–state as he made the decision to remain in his house from 1922 onwards. It was during the darkest, loneliest, and most impoverished period of his life that he wrote his greatest works: Metâlib ve Mezâhib, a partial translation of a French lycée philosophy text, and Hak Dîni. From his writings emerges a portrait of a man who was committed to preserving a role for Islam in society, which helps explain his willingness to become involved in so many different projects.

Though an exceptional man with a hand in the important events of the period, Elmalılı’s life was typical of men of the late Ottoman ulema in terms of his social, political, and professional training and expectations. In this regard, a study of Elmalılı’s life is telling about the status of religious scholars in the late Ottoman period, their fortunes in the transition from empire to nation-state, and the role of Islam in the early years of the republic. This biographical study of Elmalılı explains how an unconnected young man from the provinces climbed the ladder of Istanbul’s political and professional realms through the acquisition of the necessary social capital over the course of his educational and professional careers. Through a study of Elmalılı’s biography and experiences, we get a sketch of the intellectual and political histories of the late Ottoman and early republican periods.

One of the most widely used sources for Elmalılı’s biography is a paper given by his niece, Dr. Fatma Paksüt, at a conference commemorating his legacy in 1991.¹ This biography offers a unique personal narrative from a close family member that provides many rich details about Elmalılı’s personal life (e.g. that Elmalılı was a coffee drinker and a heavy smoker, he enjoyed playing chess, and that Fuzûlî [d. 1556] was his favorite poet) as well as general information about his career. Paksüt, however, has created a romantic narrative that glosses over significant political events altogether and portrays her uncle as a mere observer of the momentous events taking place around him. Paksüt’s biographical account is problematic more because it portrays her uncle as a passive bystander to major events rather than due to her omissions.²

Rather than rely on the existing hagiographic accounts of Elmalılı, we can turn to contemporary sources to identify the active role that he played in the events of his day.³ The nature of biographical sources on the late Ottoman ulema underwent a change by the early twentieth century due to a number of factors, including changing tastes in literary genres that had an impact on the ṭabaqāt (prosopography) genre, the increasing emphasis on specialization and the de-emphasis on belonging to the scholarly class, and the restructuring of the Meşîhât (the office of the şeyhülislâm) as part of the broader reorganizations of the bureaucracy during the reforms of the Tanzimat period (1839–1876).⁴ As a result of these changes and the impact that they had on twentieth-century biography writing on the ulema, we must consult specialized biographic works and Elmalılı’s personnel file in the Meşîhât archives in order to reconstruct his biography.

Elmalılı’s passage from the provinces to Istanbul, 1878–1907

Elmalılı was born in 1878, just as the First Constitutional Period (1876–1878) came to an end. In 1876, Abdülhamid II (r. 1876–1909), the last powerful sultan–caliph, came to the throne after a tumultuous period of dynastic succession at the tail end of the Tanzimat period. Early in his reign, Abdülhamid II reluctantly promulgated a constitution, which paved the way for creating a parliament.⁵ Within fourteen months, however, the constitutional experiment came to an abrupt end: on 13 February 1878, he suspended the constitution and prorogued parliament, which ushered in three decades of autocratic rule. Elmalılı’s intellectual formation occurred during the reign of Abdülhamid II, which witnessed thwarted attempts at reform at many levels, leading to a great deal of thinking about social, political, and intellectual issues. His experience during the reign of Abdülhamid II had an impact on his political thought, as it did for so many who lived through that period.

He was originally from the town of Elmalı, located in Antalya, in southwestern Turkey. At the time of his writing the introduction to Hak Dîni in the early years of the republic, Elmalılı took particular pride in emphasizing his “pure” Turkish lineage by pointing out that his family belonged to the Yazır tribe, a subdivision of the Oğuz.⁶ In doing so, he may have been influenced by the historical currents of republican Turkey, which emphasized the leading role of Turkic peoples in world history and civilization.⁷ Elmalılı likely emphasized this point as a reflex to the Turkish nationalism that was dominant at the time, and also to legitimize his authority. Yazır was also the name of the village in which his father was born, from where he moved to Elmalı. After the law requiring the adoption of surnames passed in 1934, Elmalılı took “Yazır” as his surname in lieu of his family name, but he is commonly referred to as “Elmalılı” (I follow this convention throughout the present study). Elmalılı came from a distinguished family of religious scholars on both his mother’s and father’s side; his mother was the daughter of a religious scholar and his father worked in the provincial sharī‘a court of Elmalı. This background left little doubt that he, too, would pursue a scholarly career. In this sense, he was like the offspring of many ulema families in that he embarked on a course of education to position himself for a career in the ilmiye. He went to the rüşdiye (secondary) school in Elmalı during his youth;⁸ among other things, he became a ḥāfiẓ (someone who had memorized the entire Qur’an) at an early age and studied Arabic.

In 1894, at the age of 15, he moved to Istanbul with his maternal uncle, Mustafa Zekaî Sarılar, to continue his studies at the storied medreses of the city, where he remained for the rest of his life. From that point onwards, Elmalılı went about advancing along the path of the ilmiye. In his choice to migrate to Istanbul, Elmalılı’s biography was similar to that of the many people who came to the imperial capital from the provinces and beyond the borders of the empire, contributing to the population influx that the city experienced and the resulting social pressures that it underwent. Many came to Istanbul to pursue better opportunities, escape bad circumstances, flee foreign empires as territory fell away from the empire, or seek refuge from the chaos and violence at home; not all of these migrants would find success, and their presence in the imperial capital would contribute to the political and social dislocations it experienced. Their presence in Istanbul and attempts at integration led them to contribute to the vibrancy of its intellectual culture while at the same time creating palpable social pressures that needed to be addressed by government officials.

Elmalılı began his studies in the Istanbul medrese system at a time when there initially was momentum for medrese education reform. In 1892, Abdülhamid II had attempted to reform medrese education, but these efforts were short lived and eventually abandoned, leaving the status quo in place for two more decades; this neglect led to a decline of the medreses, which generated a lot of discussion about their reform in this period.⁹ Thus, Elmalılı’s education took place in the environment of the traditional medrese system of Istanbul. We have little specific information about Elmalılı’s education, but we do know that he went through the standard Ottoman medrese curriculum and that he received a strong training in the Arabic linguistic sciences, Persian poetry, Ḥanafī fiqh, tafsīr, hadith, and Ash‘arī-Māturīdī theology.¹⁰

We do have little information about Elmalılı’s dearest and most influential teacher. For his studies, Elmalılı roamed from medrese to medrese, listening in on classes and teachers, until he settled on taking part in class at the Beyazit Medresesi with Kayserilî Mahmûd Hamdî Efendi (d. 1914), from whom he received an ijāza in 1322AH/1904.¹¹ Kayserilî Mahmûd Hamdî, a prominent teacher with a sterling reputation in Istanbul, had a large following of students. In a sign of his distinction, Kayserilî Mahmûd Hamdî was selected the head of the Meclis-i Tedkikat-i Şer’îye (a committee that reviewed appeals relating to the sharī‘a courts) in 1914 before his death.¹² Elmalılı quickly rose to the top of his class, silencing his peers as class sessions often turned into a dialogue between himself and his teacher. During this period, Elmalılı acquired the nickname “Küçük Hamdi” (“Little Hamdi”), a diminutive that also referred to his physical appearance, while Kayserilî Mahmûd Hamdî was referred to as “Büyük Hamdi” (“Big Hamdi”). He continued to use the nickname “Küçük Hamdi” until Kayserilî Mahmûd Hamdî’s death in 1914.¹³

Elmalılı’s academic and professional career took off after 1905, eleven years after his arrival in Istanbul. By the time he had completed his studies, he had mastered the subjects taught at the medrese. He went on to teach at different academic institutions and received several professional appointments. He passed the rüûs exam (an exam taken after a multi-year assistantship one completes after finishing his medrese studies, the successful completion of which qualifies one to teach at the beginning level [ibtidâ-i haric] of the Istanbul medrese system) in 1905, when he began teaching at the Beyazit Medresesi, where he had begun his own studies when he had first arrived in Istanbul.¹⁴ In 1907, Elmalılı was appointed to the office of the Meşîhât mektûbi kalemi, which was an office that provided secretarial support to the şeyhülislâm.¹⁵ During the same time period, he continued his studies at the Mekteb-i Nüvvâb (the school for judges in the Islamic courts), graduating first in his class in 1907. In 1908, Elmalılı attained the level of dersiâm (a medrese teacher who teaches students, passed the rüûs exam, and holds an ijāza).¹⁶ During Abdülhamid II’s reign, small changes were made to the process of becoming a dersiâm; the frequency of the examinations were increased, but only fifteen people were designated as “dersiâm” per year.¹⁷ Elmalılı’s attaining the level of dersiâm in a short period of time was an indication of his intellect and his advancement along the career path in the ilmiye. It was around the time that he finished his academic training and became dersiâm that Elmalılı married Firdavz Hanım, with whom he had four children.

In the same year in which he became dersiâm, 1908, the Young Turk Revolution broke out, which altered the political landscape of Istanbul and the empire. The revolution was a response to the autocratic rule of Abdülhamid II, whose reign led to widespread discontent across the empire. In Istanbul, a group of medical students created a group in opposition to his rule; they later formed the Committee of Union and Progress (İttihat ve Teraki Cemiyeti) (CUP) in June 1889.¹⁸ This group steadily attracted members, and the authorities were eventually able to identify them. The intervening years between their identification by the authorities and their rise to polit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 A religious scholar’s life in a tumultuous period
• 2 Qur’an commentary in the nineteenth century
• 3 Commissioning a Qur’an commentary suitable for the modern period
• 4 The philosophical context of Elmalılı’s religious understanding
• 5 Hak Dîni and its contemporary concerns
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index