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" Reproduction of the Ottoman Legal Knowledge: The Case of Ibrahim Al-Halabi’s Multaqa Al-Abhur and Defining the Concept of Baghy in Commentarial Writings on It (16th to 18th Centuries) "
Kopuz, Kasim
Schull, Kent F.
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Latin Dissertation
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English
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| Record Number
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1052834
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TL51951
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| Main Entry
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Kopuz, Kasim
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| Title & Author
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Reproduction of the Ottoman Legal Knowledge: The Case of Ibrahim Al-Halabi’s Multaqa Al-Abhur and Defining the Concept of Baghy in Commentarial Writings on It (16th to 18th Centuries)\ Kopuz, KasimSchull, Kent F.
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| College
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State University of New York at Binghamton
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| Date
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2019
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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2019
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393 p.
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| Abstract
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This dissertation is on the emergence of a Hanafi legal textbook, Multaqa al-Abhur (written in 1517) in the Ottoman Empire, and its transformation into a discursive authority over the Ottoman legal practices and culture through commentarial reproduction of it during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The book is produced as a religio-legal textbook during the early stages of the Ottoman state’s transformation into an Imperial State. Its author, Ibrahim al-Halabi wrote the book as an Arab origin Ottoman scholar in Istanbul. Al-Halabi wrote the book to help the students and teachers of fiqh (Islamic law). The religio-legal knowledge that is re-produced in the book related to practice of religion in everyday life. However, the absorption of the book into state’s legal apparatuses, mainly through the official jurists using the book as source of judicial rulings, changed the representation of the book from being a fiqh book into a code of law for the state by the end of the eighteenth century. Contemporary modernist discourse picked up the state oriented view of the book and presented the production of the Ottoman legal culture as moribund and frozen from during the period from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. The proponents of this discourse argued that commentarial authors on the book merely repeated the earlier writings and did not have originality and intellectual dynamism. This dissertation argues that the production of the Ottoman legal knowledge, shown in the example of the emergence of the Multaqa and continuous commentarial writings on it, was not moribund and static. In contrast, the commentarial writing shows a continuous interaction and negotiation between the reproduction of legal discourse and Ottoman historical forces. To show this interaction, the dissertation argues that by the end of the sixteenth century, once the scholarly community of the jurists received the book as legally authoritative discourse, there emerged continues commentarial writings on the book of Multaqa. Through commentarial writings the discursive authority of the book was constantly reinforced and the commentarial writings provided a frame of juristic response to the changing dynamics of the Ottoman state and social formation. As a sample to exemplify this interaction, the dissertation analyzes the discursive re-production of the definition of legal term baghy, a specific form of rebellion, in commentarial writing. The dissertation shows that, the term baghy started to be defined with more qualitative legal features added to its legal definition. The study specifically focuses on the elements of the legitimacy of sate authority, which is represented in the concept of the imam. Increasing number of commentaries are produced with more qualitative features of the Imam being highlighted and integrated into the discourse on baghy. This happened around the mid-seventeenth century, the time when sultan’s authority at the central apparatuses of the state was weakened. The weakness became visible in the increasing number of the forced deposition of the sultans in the empire. A larger number of commentaries discussed the qualities of the legitimate imam when defining the term baghy. The dissertation also argues that there is no a linear developmental process in the production of legal knowledge and its culture in the Ottoman Empire. To demonstrate this, dissertation points out that the qualities of the Imam were already defined and discerned in Hanafi legal books by the fourteenth century. When commentators wrote their book in late sixteenth and early seventeenth century they did not pay much attention the qualities of the Imam. However, when sultan’s position within the central state apparatuses weakened commentators started to increasingly speak about the concept of “rightful imam” in defining the act of baghy. This shows that the commentarial writings on the Multaqa did not developed in a linear conceptual development, rather the authors were selective in their discursive choices, and negotiate in their production of legal discourse on baghy.
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Islam
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Law
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Middle Eastern history
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Schull, Kent F.
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State University of New York at Binghamton
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