Politics of Sufism in the Ottoman Empire: A Comparative Analysis

Sufi orders and brotherhoods have extensively contributed the reproduction and transformation of the social and political formation in the Ottoman Empire besides their significance in cultural and intellectual life. Contrary to the previous scholarship which identifies Sufi orders as unchanged and timeless religious movements during the medieval times, and one of the causes of political decline and social decay in early modern era when the Empire underwent profound social and political transformations; revisionist studies underscore the importance of historicizing Sufi orders and recognizing the transformations in their internal dynamics and their changing destinies in the course of history. In this paper, I am going to analyze three books on Sufi movements in the Ottoman Empire—namely, A Culture of Sufism: Naqshbandis in the Ottoman World, 1450-1700, by Dina Le Gall (2005); The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought in the Ottoman Empire: The Rise of the Halveti Order, 1350-1650, by John J. Curry (2010); and God’s Unruly Friends: Dervish Groups in the Islamic Later Middle Period, 1200-1550, by Ahmet T. Karamustafa (1994). I argue that an adequate understanding of the history of Sufi orders requires taking the political conditions and the relationship between Sufi groups and political authorities into account. Not only the personal relations of political actors with Sufi lodges and masters, the broad political framework and social conditions as well should be addressed by the historian to account for any change and/or persistence in the internal dynamics as well as the social recognition of the analyzed Sufi order.