engleski

Delimiting the Faithful: Confessional Boundaries of the Muslim Community as prescribed in the Fetvâs of the Ottoman Şeyhülislâms (16th-18th Centuries)

As conquerors, Muslims acquired and maintained superior social position over non-Muslims in the Middle East and the Balkans. Even though gradually increasing in number via Islamization, in general Muslims represented a minority in predominantly Christian environment. Relative closeness of Muslims and Christians in religious matters was much greater in practice, beliefs and customs, and was further increasing due to incorporation of new cultural elements introduced by Christian converts to Islam and Christian women married to Muslims. In such circumstances the perspective of acculturation and loss of separate identity through syncretism seemed realistic and generated anxiety among Muslim religious scholars and dignitaries. Therefore, issues concerning preservation of Muslim distinctiveness and isolation from external influences represent one of major themes in Islamic legal literature. The fetvâ collections of the representative Ottoman şeyhülislâms of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries – Ebu’s-Suʻûd Efendi (1545- 1574), Çatalcalı ‘Ali Efendi (1674-1686, 1692), and Abdu’r-Rahîm Efendi (1715-1716) – provide abundance of examples of the concern for demarcation of Muslim community in the Ottoman Empire. The fetvâs tend to regulate all fields of Muslim life, from instructions for correct performance of ritual and religious duties to prescriptions concerning proper clothing, diet, salutation, etc. Although some of these prescriptions might seem irrelevant to an outsider, their proper observance, i.e., the orthopraxy, clearly marks confessional boundaries between Muslims and non-Muslims. The main intention was to prevent contacts that might have led to potential amalgamation between Christians and Muslims, many of whom in the Balkans were recent converts still maintaining connections with Christian relatives and friends. In order to retain confessional boundaries intact, Muslim participation in Christian social activities as dancing (oro or kolo), playing music, or attending weddings was strictly forbidden, as well as consumption of substances otherwise characteristic of Christian diet – alcohol and pork. Such offences were regarded as the ‘signs of disbelief’ (kufr), and severely punished, often including the ‘renewal of the belief, ’ while persistence in the offence and its repeating might have been labeled as apostasy and punished by death.

Ottoman Empire, Islamization, non-Muslims, Islamic Law

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