Virtue, Piety and the Law: A Study of Birgivī Meḥmed Efendī’s al-Ṭarīqa al-Muḥammadiyya By Katharina Anna Ivanyi

Extract

Birgivi Mehmed Efendi (d. 981/1573) ranks among the most prolific and controversial scholars of early modern Ottoman history. However, despite his significance, especially for the Muslim revivalist tradition, we have seen very little scholarly interest in his life and work in Western academia, and certainly no dedicated studies in the English language. That is until now. Katharina Ivanyi’s examination of Birgivi’s monumental al-Tariqa al-Muhammadiyya (TM) marks what I hope will be a reversal of the status quo. This meticulous study (volume 72 of Brill’s ‘The Ottoman Empire and its Heritage’ series) departs from the typical historical/historiographical approach in Ottoman studies and adopts instead careful textual excavation and exploration along thematic lines. Along the way, Ivanyi engages with an impressive range of primary and secondary scholarship in several languages, including Ottoman, modern Turkish, Arabic, French, German and Bosnian. The end product is an engaging monograph replete with original insights.

Neatly spread over five chapters, with extensive footnotes throughout, the book begins with a survey of Birgivi’s life, scholarly oeuvre and historical epoch, then examines the intellectual framework of TM, before presenting its close textual study of the TM in the final three chapters. The first of these (ch. 3) provides an overview of the structure and contents of TM, the second (ch. 4) addresses a key strand in the text, namely sincerity, and the last (ch. 5) explores issues related to the Ottoman moral economy, including Birgivi’s position on cash waqfs. Through her close analysis of TM, Ivanyi sheds light on Birgivi’s thought as it relates to practical ethics, exhortation and advice. Her most significant finding is that Birgivi’s project of individual and societal reform was premised on an uncompromising rigidity of approach that led to inevitable clashes with powerful members of the Ottoman state, not least Ebu’s-Su^cud Efendi, Shaykh al-Islam of the realm from 952–82/1545–74.