Taming the Messiah by Aslihan Gurbuzel;

Author:Aslihan Gurbuzel;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780520388215
Publisher: University of California Press

A PERSIAN QURĀN OR SHARIA-VIOLATING POETRY: PLACING THE MESNEVĪ IN HEAVEN OR HELL

Throughout his treatise, Anḳaravī refrained from naming his opponents. Yet, he provided a useful, if indirect, summary of the views of these opponents who revived the motto “Persian is the language of hellfire.” Without naming names, Anḳaravī suggested that his opponents aimed at restricting the Islamic canon to the text of the Qurān and the prophetic sayings, by saying:

Preferable speech is [restricted to] God’s [Holy] Book, and preferable guidance and agreeable conduct . . . is the Path of Muḥammed and the Conduct of Aḥmed. Disagreeable and objectionable are any affairs that are [novel and recent]; any novelty is an illicit innovation (bidʿa), any innovation is to stray from the Right Path.49

All else, therefore, was to be excluded from Islamic learning and ritual. In other words, the disagreement concerned the contours of the authoritative canon. What texts could be used to justify an act or ritual as Islamic? Mevlevī ritual was based on Rūmī’s Mesnevī, music, and dance. The authoritative Mevlevī canon therefore included Persian poetry and Islamic philosophical ethics, which respectively justified these practices. Their critics, as seen in the passage above, considered neither of these traditions authoritative.50 Moreover, Persian ethical-mystical poetry such as the Mesnevī was known for explicit criticism of the textualist formalism defended by puritan movements.51 The emphasis on excluding anything but the Qurān from litanies and religious gatherings, which Anḳaravi alluded to, prevailed in the catechism of Ḳadızāde Meḥmed Efendi, whom Ottoman authors portrayed as Anḳaravī’s opponent. Throughout his catechism, Ḳadızāde enjoined Muslims to follow nothing but the exact, verbatim wording (söz) of the Book, a term that refers only to the Qurān.52 Other Ḳadızādeli-leaning preachers from the seventeenth century followed his lead and propagated for strict restriction of religious ritual to the Qurān. For instance, one such preacher targeted the use of poetry in religious ritual:

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