Sahin 2010 Constantinople and the End Time

Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2010 DOI: 10.1163/157006510X512223

Journal of Early Modern History 14 (2010) 317-354 brill.nl/jemh

Constantinople and the End Time: The Ottoman Conquest as a Portent of the Last Hour

Kaya ahin*Tulane University

AbstractThe Muslim conquest of Constantinople was seen in various apocalyptic traditions as one of the portents of the end. An Ottoman mystic, Ahmed B-cn, gave voice to these apoca-lyptic fears and expectations soon after the Ottoman conquest in 1453 CE. His apocalyp-tic narrative, expressed in the Turkish vernacular, placed the Ottoman enterprise within the final tribulations and hailed the sultan, Mehmed II, as an apocalyptic warrior. This endorsement heralded the emergence of a new imperial ideology in the sixteenth century: Ottoman history became an important component of universal history, while Ottoman sultans were attributed cosmic responsibilities and messianic abilities.

KeywordsApocalypticism, the fall of Constantinople, Ottoman Empire, Ahmed B-cn

Introduction

The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in May 29, 1453 repre-sented, among other things, the realization of a prophecy with universal appeal. As the inheritors of both Byzantine and Islamic apocalypticism

* Assistant Professor, Tulane University, Department of History. The author would like to thank Cornell H. Fleischer and Evrim Binba for their invaluable comments and cons-tant encouragement, and the anonymous reviewer and the editors of the JEMH for their helpful suggestions. Earlier versions of the article were presented at the Early Modern Workshop (University of Chicago), the Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies Faculty and Fellows Series (Northwestern University) and the Fifty-Fifth Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America.Note on transliteration and dates: Otto-man Turkish is transliterated by using the modern Turkish alphabet while Arabic translite-rations, for the sake of convenience, omit diacritical marks as much as possible. All dates are Common Era unless otherwise indicated.

318 K. ahin / Journal of Early Modern History 14 (2010) 317-354

fifteenth-century Ottomans were not immune from it. They were also influenced by a heightened sense of apocalyptic urgency that permeated the Islamic world, indeed the whole Eurasian continent, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. While apocalyptic speculations in the Ottoman realm reached a new level before and after the conquest, modern Turkish and Ottoman scholarshipwith the exception of a few workshas failed to recognize the existence of a distinct Ottoman apocalypticism, not to say its impact on Ottoman politics and historiography. In order to try and fill this lacuna this article will analyze two post-1453 works by an Otto-man mystic and scholar, Ahmed B-cn (d. after 1465; pronounced Bee-jaan): his Drr-i Meknn (The Hidden Pearl, hereafter DM) and Mnteha (The Epilogue).1 Ahmed was influenced by Byzantine and Islamic apocalypticism; he also relied on works of divination ( jafr). He believed that the conquest was a sign of the Last Hour (al-Sa), but he also believed that Muslims and Ottomans had an important role to fulfill in the final battles. Even though Ahmed passed away in the last quarter of the fifteenth century the new apocalypticism that he started (together with its messianic overtones) would become especially relevant in the context of the Ottoman-Habsburg and Ottoman-Safavid rivalries of the sixteenth century. By interpreting Ottoman history within a cosmic/uni-versal context, and by granting the Ottoman dynasty a world-historical role, Ottoman apocalypticism left an indelible mark in the political imag-inary of Ottoman imperialism.

The Conquest of Constantinople in Modern Turkish Historiography

In modern Ottoman/Turkish historiography the conquest of Constanti-nople is treated either as a landmark of Ottoman military superiority, a sign of divine assistance, or the beginning of a process of empire building. It has been argued, for instance, that the Ottoman conquest is a world-historical event that ushered in the end of the Middle Ages and the begin-ning of the Renaissance.2 A typical account usually praises the military

1 For the Drr-i Meknn I will use a recent, quite detailed and comprehensive, critical edition: Ahmed Bican Yazcolu, Drr-i Meknun: kritische Edition mit Kommentar, ed. Laban Kaptein (Asch: self publication, 2007), hereafter Kaptein/DM. For the Mnteha, the references are to the following manuscript, unless otherwise indicated: Sleymaniye Library, ms. Hac Mahmud Efendi 1657.

2 A typical example is smail Hmi Dnimend, stanbul Fethinin nsan ve Meden Kymeti (Istanbul: stanbul Fetih Cemiyeti, 1953). The work was meant to commemorate

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skills and gentlemanly qualities of Mehmed II (r. 1444-46, 1451-81), and emphasizes the heroism and determination of the Ottoman army, but also mentions its kindness towards the defeated.3 These narratives are meant to provide a contrast to works by modern European historians in which Constantinoples last hour is recounted as a tragic event.4 There are other apologetic approaches that emphasize the religious aspects of the con-quest. For instance, frequent references are made to a saying (hadith) that is attributed to Prophet Muhammad: Constantinople shall be conquered indeed; what a wonderful leader will that leader be, and what a wonderful army will that army be.5 As will be discussed below, the bulk of Muham-mads sayings about Constantinople have apocalyptic tones but these are usually ignored.

Scholars without an explicit nationalist or religious agenda, on the other hand, usually recognize the conquest as the event that started a pro-cess of urban, economic and political restructuring. This process eventu-ally culminated in the construction of an Ottoman Empire, the empowerment of the Ottoman sultan and his palace household, the emer-gence of a central administrative apparatus, etc.6 Even though the institu-

the 500th anniversary of the Ottoman conquest. It was translated into English and French and published the same year as, respectively, The Importance of the Conquest of Istanbul for Mankind and Civilization, and, La valeur humanitaire et civilisatrice de la conqute de Constantinople.

3 E.g. Selhattin Tansel, Osmanl Kaynaklarna Gre Fatih Sultan Mehmedin Siyas ve Asker Faaliyeti (Ankara: Trk Tarih Kurumu, 1953), 63-111.

4 See, for example, Joseph Hammer von Purgstall, Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches (Pest: C.A. Hartleben Verlag, 1827), vol. 1, von der Grndung des Osmanischen Reiches bis zur Eroberung Constantinopels 1300-1453, 524-58; Kenneth M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1204-1571), vol. 2, The Fifteenth Century (Philadelphia, PA: American Philo-sophical Society, 1978), 108-37; Franz Babinger, Mehmed der Eroberer und seine Zeit (Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1953), 92-105; Steven Runciman, The Fall of Constantinople, 1453 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1965). A somehow more balanced account is found in Donald M. Nicol, The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 1261-1453, 2nd edition (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 369-93.

5 This approach is represented by works such as mer Nasuhi Bilmen, stanbulun Tarih esi ve Sure-i Fetih Tefsiri (stanbul: Gelenek, 2003, originally published in 1953); Necdet Ylmaz, ed., Deeri ve Tefsiri Asndan Fetih Hadisi: Feth-i Kostantiniyye (Istanbul: Drulhadis, 2002); and especially Ahmet Araka, Konstantiniyye Fethi Hadisinin slam Fetih Hareketlerine Etkisi ve Oluturduu Motivasyon, in I. Uluslararas stanbulun Fethi Sempozyumu, Istanbul, 24-25 May 1996 (Istanbul: BB Kltr leri Daire Bakanl, 1997), 87-95.

6 For the most concise form of this argument see Halil nalck, Mehemmed II, Ency-clopedia of Islam 2, electronic edition; relevant sections of idem., Istanbul, ibid.; idem.,


tional approach is far superior to the apologetic one, it shares with it a complete omission of the issue of apocalypticism. For scholars trying to portray the conquest as one of the main historical achievements of the Turkish nation, or to describe Mehmed II as a divinely anointed ruler, the existence of Ottoman narratives that viewed the conquest as a portent of the Last Hour is, obviously, not the most convenient subject. Similarly, the proponents of the institutional approach cannot be expected to assess the importance of attitudes and mentalities that were inspired not by a relatively secular, almost positivistic teleology but by an eschato-logical one.

Stphane Yerasimos and Feridun Emecen are the only two scholars who have discussed the weight of apocalyptic speculations in the Ottoman realm around the time of the conquest. In his Lgendes dempire, Yerasi-mos provides a detailed study on the exchange of apocalyptic tropes between the Islamic and Byzantine traditions, the migration of these tropes into the Ottoman realm, and the emergence of distinctly Ottoman apocalyptic narratives that center on Constantinople.7 He is also the edi-tor, together with Benjamin Lellouch, of a volume of essays about the apocalyptic significance of Constantinople, as well as apocalypticism in Anatolia, Byzantium and the Balkans before and during the rise to power of the Ottomans.8 Feridun Emecen, in a work devoted to a thorough re-reading and critique of the existing wisdom concerning the conquest, aptly points to the awareness of contemporary Ottomans about these

The Policy of Mehmed II toward the Greek Population of Istanbul and the Byzantine Buildings of the City, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 23 (1969-70): 229-49. For a more recent example of this emphasis on institutionalization, see contributions by various authors in Necat Birinci, ed., Fatih ve Dnemi / Mehmed II and His Period (Istanbul: Trk Kltrne Hizmet Vakf, 2004). This approach also prevails in general works of Ottoman history. In Caroline Finkels Osmans Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire (New York: Basic Books, 2005), the chapter that deals with Mehmed IIs reign is entitled An Imperial Vision (ibid., 48-80). Also see Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire 1300-1650. The Struc-ture of Power, second edition (Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 25 passim.

7 Stphane Yerasimos, Lgendes dempire: La fondation de Constantinople et de Sainte-Sophie dans les traditions turques (Istanbul and Paris: Institut franais dtudes anatoliennes; Librairie dAmrique et dOrient Jean Maisonneuve, 1990).

8 Benjamin Lellouch and Stphane Yerasimos, eds., Les traditions apocalyptiques au tour-nant de la chute de Constantinople: Actes de la Table ronde dIstanbul, 13-14 avril 1996 (Istanbul and Paris: Institut franais dtudes anatoliennes; LHarmattan, 1999).


apocalyptic speculations, and to their efforts at dissimulating them.9 However, the author does not pursue the implications of this particular finding. Yerasimos, on the other hand, tends to associate Ottoman apoca-lypticism with political dissent and does not recognize the ways in which it legitimized the rule of the Ottoman dynasty.

Hidden behind the agendas of modern Turkish nationalism and Turk-ish political Islam, or seen as irrational and inconsequential by scholars focusing on institution building, Ottoman apocalypticism shares the fate of other post-1000 Muslim apocalyptical writings. David Cook, whose recent work has led to a much-needed renewal of interest in Islamic apoc-alypticism, clearly states how difficult it was for modern scholars even to recognize Islamic apocalypticism as a legitimate sub-section of Islamic studies.10 Sad Amir Arjomand, who shares Cooks views that Islamic apocalypticism has been largely ignored in modern scholarship, points to another important misperception: Islamic apocalypticism, especially in its Sunni variant, is usually accepted as having reached maturity around 1000. After this date apocalyptic movements, individuals and texts are mostly studied within the context of, or as stemming from, Shiite Islam.11 This approach denies the centrality of apocalypticism in Sunni Muslim cultures and societies and relegates it to marginal movements and groups. The pro-Sunni bias that prevails in modern Islamic studies also permeates the study of Ottoman religious thought and movements. The Ottoman enterprise is often closely associated with Sunni Islam; apocalyptic and messianic ideas are typically attributed to heterodox and Shiite religious groups; and apocalyptic content found in explicitly Sunni works is often downplayed as manifestations of traditional Islamic eschatology.12 This selective reading of Sunni Islam, which purges it of all apocalyptic and messianic beliefs, is belied by Ahmeds works. He describes himself as a

9 Feridun Emecen, stanbulun Fethi Olay ve Meseleleri (Istanbul: Kitabevi, 2003), 51-65.

10 David Cook, Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 2002), 29-33.

11 Sad Amir Arjomand, Islamic Apocalypticism in the Classical Period, in The Ency-clopedia of Apocalypticism, eds. Bernard McGinn, John J. Collins, and Stephen J. Stein, vol. 2, Apocalypticism in Western History and Culture, ed. Bernard McGinn (New York: Continuum, 1999), 238.

12 For a typical representative of this approach see Ali Cokun, Mehdilik Fenomeni. Osmanl Dnemi Dini Kurtulu Hareketleri zerine Bir Din Bilimi Aratrmas (Istanbul: z Yaynclk, 2004).


devout Sunni Muslim but does not have any qualms about referring to the authority of important Shiite figures or, for that matter, the Byzantine apocalyptic tradition. This is the reason why the study of his life and works will not only help us better understand Ottoman mentalities around the middle of the fifteenth century, but will also contribute to the study of post-classical Islamic apocalypticism. Finally, it will also revise our understanding of what it meant to be a Sunni before the Ottoman-Safavid struggle of the sixteenth century turned Sunni and Shiite Islam into mutually exclusive confessions and identities.

The Muslim Conquest as Apocalyptic Event

For contemporary observers, in 1453, the Ottoman conquest did not simply signify the enmity between Islam and Christianity or the imperial transition from Byzantium to the Ottoman Empire. For Muslims, Chris-tians, and Jews alike it meant a warning about the proximity of the End Time/the Last Hour. Apocalypticism was a very rich and quite popular intellectual tradition throughout the history of the Byzantine Empire, and the end of the empire was closely associated with the end of the world.13 The political, military and economic problems suffered during the last centuries of its existence gave a particular urgency to apocalypticism.14 Constantinoples capture by Arabs/Muslims was often associated with the

13 For Byzantine apocalypticism see Gerhard Podskalsky, Byzantinische Reicheschatolo-gie: die Periodisierung der Weltgeschichte in den vier Grossreichen (Daniel 2 und 7) und dem tausendjhrigen Friedensreiche (Apok. 20). Eine motivgeschichtliche Untersuchung (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1972); Cyril Mango, Byzantium. The Empire of New Rome (New York, NY: Scribners Sons, 1980), 201-17; Paul Alexander, The Byzantine Apocalyptic Tra-dition, ed. with an introduction by Dorothy de F. Abrahamse (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984); Paul Magdalino, The History of the Future and Its Uses: Proph-ecy, Policy and Propaganda, in The Making of Byzantine History. Studies Dedicated to Don-ald M. Nicol, eds. Roderick Beaton and Charlotte Rouech (London: Centre for Hellenic Studies, Kings College London/Aldershot: Variorum, 1993), 3-34; David Olster, Byzan-tine Apocalypses, in The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, 2: 48-73; Paul Magdalino, The End of Time in Byzantium, in Endzeiten. Eschatologie in den Monotheistischen Weltreli-gionen, eds. Wolfram Brandes & Felicitas Schmieder (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 119-33.

14 For the apocalyptic atmosphere of the last centuries of Byzantium see Marie-Hlne Congourdeau, Byzance et la fin du monde. Courants de penses apocalyptiques sous les Palologues, in Les traditions apocalyptiques au tournant de la chute de Constantinople, eds. Lellouch and Yerasimos, 56-73.


End Time in the Byzantine apocalyptic tradition. Moreover, since the ear-liest centuries of the empire, Constantinoples topography, its monu-ments, and anecdotes about its foundation had always fueled the fires of apocalyptic fears and expectations. The constriction of the empire to a small area around Constantinople further magnified the apocalyptic role attributed to the city.15 The Ottoman conquest of the city in 1453 hap-pened a mere thirty-nine years before the seven-thousandth (and thus final) year of Creation according to the Byzantine tradition and, in the words of Paul Magdalino, it required little imagination or juggling of the figures to believe that the reign of Antichrist had arrived.16 The scholar and clergyman Gennadios Scholarios, the first Ottoman-anointed Ortho-dox patriarch, provided the readers of his Chronographia with this crucial information;17 he consoled himself and his flock with the thought that they did not have long to suffer.18

Since the Byzantine apocalyptic tradition had become an integral part of European apocalypticism in the centuries preceding 1453,19 the fall of Constantinople led to a wave of renewed apocalyptic speculations in

15 For Constantinople as one of the central tropes in Byzantine apocalypticism, see Gilbert Dagron, Constantinople imaginaire. tudes sur le recueil des Patria (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1984), 323-30; Walter K. Hanak, Some Historiographical Observations on the Sources of Nestor-Iskanders The Tale of Constantinople, in The Mak-ing of Byzantine History, eds. Beaton and Rouech (Aldershot, 1993), 35-45; idem., One Source, Two Renditions: The Tale of Constantinople and Its Fall in 1453, Byzantinoslavica 62, no. 1 (2004): 239-50; Wolfram Brandes, Der Fall Konstantinopels als apokalyp-tisches Ereignis, in Geschehenes und Geschriebenes. Studien zu Ehren von Gnther S. Hen-rich und Klaus-Peter Matschke, eds. S. Kolditz and R. C. Mueller (Leipzig: Eudora-Verlag, 2005), 453-69; Albrecht Berger, Das apokalyptische Konstantinopel. Topographisches in apokalyptischen Schriften der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit, in Endzeiten, eds. Brandes & Schmieder, 135-55. Finally, Agostino Pertusis magisterial study deserves a special mention here: Fine di Bisanzio e Fine del Mondo. Significato e Ruolo Storico delle Profezie sulla Caduta di Costantinopoli in Oriente e in Occidente, ed. posth. Enrico Morini (Rome: Isti-tuto Palazzo Borromini, 1988).

16 Magdalino, The history of the future, 27. 17 For the Greek text and a French translation see Congourdeau, Byzance et la fin du

monde, 74-97.18 Hanak, Some Historiographical Observations, 43-4.19 For the impact of the Byzantine apocalyptic tradition in medieval Europe, see Per-

tusi, Fine di Bisanzio e Fine del Mondo, 5-24, 62-67; Paul Alexander, The Diffusion of Byzantine Apocalypses in the Medieval West and the Beginnings of Joachimism, in Prophecy and Millenarianism. Essays in Honour of Marjorie Reeves, ed. Ann Williams (Essex, UK: Longman, 1980), 53-106.


Europe as well. Medieval Europe was rife with prophecies about Muslims20 and later Turks. The Ottoman expansion in the Balkans, together with the fall of Constantinople, infused these with particular immediacy. As a result the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries witnessed a radical increase in apocalyptic and prophetic speculation. Plans about restoring Constantinople and Jerusalem to Christianity and establishing the Last World Empire began to figure in the political agenda of every ambitious monarch.21

Islamic apocalypticism, which grew in dialogue with pre-existing Near Eastern apocalypses, borrowed a large number of themes from Byzantine apocalypticism and produced its own synthesis.22 Two common tropes, found in both Byzantine and Islamic traditions, are especially relevant for the study of Ottoman apocalypticism:23 Constantinople,24 and the Blond

20 Medieval European apocalypticism incorporated the Saracens in its vision of the end very early on, as shown by Jean Flori, LIslam et la fin des temps: Linterprtation proph-tique des invasions musulmanes dans la chrtient mdivale (Paris: Seuil, 2007), and espe-cially 116-147.

21 See Jean Deny, Les pseudo-prophties concernant les Turcs au XVIe sicle, Revue des tudes islamiques 10, no. 2 (1936): 201-20; Kenneth Setton, Western Hostility to Islam and Prophecies of Turkish Doom (Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society, 1992), 15-27; Yoko Miyamoto, The Influence of Medieval Prophecies on Views of the Turks. Islam and Apocalypticism in the Sixteenth Century, Journal of Turkish Studies 17 (1993): 125-45; Pl Fodor, The View of the Turk In Hungary: The Apocalyptic Tradition and the Legend of the Red Apple in Ottoman-Hungarian Context, in Les traditions apocalyptiques au tournant de la chute de Constantinople, eds. Lellouch and Yerasimos, 99-131; Brinda Charry, Turkish Futures: Phophecy and the Other, in The Uses of the Future in Early Modern Europe, eds. Andrea Brady and Emily Butterworth (New York: 2010), 73-89.

22 For the apocalyptic exchange between Islam and other religious traditions, see Cook, Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic, 2-9; Hayrettin Ycesoy, Messianic Beliefs and Imperial Poli-tics in Medieval Islam. The Abbsid Caliphate in the Early Ninth Century (Columbia, SC: The University of South Carolina Press, 2009), 28-35. For the formative impact of the Muslim-Byzantine wars on Islamic apocalypticism, see Wilferd Madelung, Apocalyptic Prophecies in Hims in the Umayyad Age, Journal of Semitic Studies 31, no. 2 (Autumn 1986): 158-74; Suliman Bashear, Early Muslim-Byzantine Wars: A Review of Arabic Sources, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Series 3, 1, no. 2 (1991): 173-207; idem., Arabs and Others in Early Islam, Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam 8 (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1997) throughout, and especially 123; Cook, op. cit., 66-80.

23 For a concise analysis of the confluences between Byzantine, Arab and Turkish tradi-tions concerning Constantinople see Yerasimos, Lgendes dempire, 183-99.

24 For the transfer of themes about Constantinople from the Christian to the Muslim tradition, and for the additions of Muslims, see Cook, Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic, 59-66. For specific studies on the function of Constantinople in the Islamic apocalyptic


Peoples25 (Banu al-Asfar). Accordingly, the Muslim conquest of Constan-tinople was a portent of the end. This first conquest would soon be fol-lowed by a counter-attack by the Blond Peoples, and the city would be recovered by Christians. Muslims would retreat to Syria and/or the Ara-bian Peninsula, suffer extreme casualties, and ultimately conquer the city only after the descent of the Messiah and his leadership of the Muslim armies. In the Byzantineand eventually Europeanapocalyptic tradi-tion the Last Roman Emperor tamed the Blond Peoples (associated with Nordic peoples) and eventually defeated the Ishmaelites with their help. The Islamic tradition also recognized the Blond Peoples as the main ene-mies of Muslims in the final apocalyptic battles. The Blond Peoples trope traveled throughout Islamic history; it was initially applied to the Byzan-tines, and then to the Crusaders.

The Ottomans inherited these tropes, fears, and expectations and applied them to their own realities. Even in the late eighteenth century, as noted by the diplomat and historian Ignatius Mouradgea dOhsson, some Ottomans were apprehensive of an eventual loss of Constantinople and a retreat into Syria.26 In the sixteenth century, an Ottoman vizier inter-preted the yellow fleur-de-lis of the French crown as the sign of the Blond Peoples, only to be told by an anxious French envoy that the Blond Peoples were actually the Habsburgs Landsknecht troops wearing yellow

tradition see Armand Abel, Un Hadit sur la prise de Rome dans la tradition eschatologique de lIslam, Arabica 5 (1958): 1-14; Louis Massignon, Textes prmonitoires et commen-taires mystiques relatifs la prise de Constantinople par les Turcs en 1453 (=858 Hg), Oriens 6, no. 1 (June 1953): 10-17. A summary of Arab views about Constantinople from the rise of Islam onwards can be found in Nadia Maria El Cheikh, Byzantium Viewed by Arabs, Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs XXXVI (Cambridge, Mass.: Center for Mid-dle Eastern Studies, Harvard University, 2004), 60-71.

25 The Blond Peoples, mentioned in several apocalyptic hadith, very early became an integral part of the Islamic apocalyptic tradition. See Ignaz Goldziher, Asfar, Encyclope-dia of Islam 2, electronic edition; Ahmad M.H. Shboul, Byzantium and the Arabs: The Image of the Byzantines as Mirrored in Arabic Literature, in Arab-Byzantine Relations in Early Islamic Times, ed. Michael Bonner (Aldershot, GB & Burlington, VT: Ashgate/Vari-orum, 2004), 237, 238; Yerasimos, Lgendes dempire, 190-1. The Blond Peoples played an important role in the Christian apocalyptic tradition as well, as shown by Pertusi, Fine di Bisanzio e Fine del Mondo, 40-62 (the Blond Peoples in Byzantine traditions) and 62-109 (the Blond Peoples in Latin and Slavic traditions); Alexander, The Byzantine Apocalyptic Tradition, 70, 161.

26 Ignatius Mouradgea dOhsson, Tableau gnral de lempire othoman, 7 volumes (Paris: F. Didot, 1788-1824), 1: 425 passim.


trousers.27 Indeed, in the first half of the sixteenth century, apocalyptic prophecies according Constantinople an important place in the final bat-tles widely circulated in the Ottoman capital. Some of these foretold an imminent Ottoman demise at the hands of European Christians while others promised an eventual victory and the emergence of the Ottoman sultan Sleyman as a messianic ruler.28 More importantly, fifteenth-century Ottoman scholars, historians, dervishes, and political figures were aware that the conquest represented more than a military achievement.

In a military council before the siege, some of the participants who opposed the siege based their objections on the apocalyptic implications of an eventual conquest. Mehmed IIs tutor and advisor, Akemseddin, tried to appease these fears by saying that he had studied Muhammads sayings, and concluded that Mehmed II would conquer the city while the Blond Peoples would attack only in the distant future.29 The trope of the Blond Peoples is also encountered in Mehmed IIs endowment deed (vak-fiye), where the sultan is described as fighting against the forces of evil represented by the Blond Peoples.30 On the other hand, as shown by Feri-dun Emecen, the persistence of these apocalyptic themes led to carefully planned efforts at downplaying and/or ignoring the apocalyptic ramifica-tions of the event. The apocalyptic meaning of the conquest had become the elephant in the room.

Akemseddin, Mehmed IIs tutor and advisor, was aware that this con-spicuous silence was not the best answer to the problem. He thus led the efforts in creating a new legacy for the conquest and the conqueror, a leg-acy that has been transferred in its entirety into the imagination of mod-ern Turkish political Islam. For instance, in a letter to the sultan during the siege, he interpreted a Quranic expression, baldatun tayyibatun (a fair territory), as a divine sign that referred to the Ottoman conquest. He supported his argument by stating that the numerical value of the letters, 857, signified the Islamic calendar year in which the city was besieged.31

27 Michel Balivet, Textes de fin dempire, rcits de fin du monde: A propos de quelques thmes communs aux groupes de la zone byzantine-turque, in Les traditions apocalypti-ques au tournant de la chute de Constantinople, eds. Lellouch and Yerasimos, 10.

28 Ibid., 10-11; Robert Finlay, Prophecy and Politics in Istanbul: Charles V, Sultan Sleyman, and the Habsburg Embassy of 1533-1534, Journal of Early Modern History 2, no. 1 (1998): 1-31; Cornell H. Fleischer, Shadows of Shadows: Prophecy and Politics in 1530s Istanbul, International Journal of Turkish Studies 13, nos. 1-2 (2007): 52-57.

29 Ylmaz, Deeri ve Tefsiri Asndan Fetih Hadisi, 70. 30 Babakanlk Osmanl Arivi, Ali Emiri, II. Mehmed 63.31 Ylmaz, Deeri ve Tefsiri Asndan Fetih Hadisi, 58. The quote is from the Quran,


In another letter, written during a particularly difficult stage of the siege, Akemseddin comforted Mehmed II by saying that he interpreted the Quran according to divinatory techniques and identified signs that pointed to the Ottoman conquest.32 Finally, the same Akemseddin used divinatory methods to discover the tomb of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari. Abu Ayyub had been one of Muhammads earliest supporters, and he reput-edly died of natural causes during a Muslim siege of Constantinople in 674. Following his request, his friends buried him under the walls of the city. The discovery of his tomb was meant to establish a link between Muhammad and the Ottoman dynasty, and the early Muslims and the Ottoman army.

Akemseddins familiarity with divination and the science of letters (hurf ) indicates that he was well-acquainted with the Muslim apocalyp-tic tradition, since these procedures, as it will be discussed below, were part of the arsenal of every Muslim apocalyptist in the fifteenth century. His knowledge of Islamic apocalypticism probably motivated him and his fellow scholars even further in creating alternative interpretations. One of these alternative interpretations to emerge in this period relied on particu-lar saying (hadith) by Muhammad: Constantinople shall be conquered indeed; what a wonderful leader will that leader be, and what a wonderful army will that army be.33 The objective was to neutralize the apocalyptic significance of the event and use the hadith to argue that Muhammad himself congratulated in advance the Ottoman sultan and his soldiers.

This saying, believed by some scholars to be an Ottoman fabrication, is not found in authoritative hadith collections such as those prepared by al-Bukhari and Muslim.34 Most of Muhammads sayings on Constantinople

chapter 34 (Saba), verse 15. Akemseddins letter is in the Topkap Palace Archives, E. 5584; it is reproduced in ibid., 71-3. The letter is signed Hzr and can thus be apocryphal or manufactured later, but the information is important in showing Ottoman attempts at creating an alternative set of prophecies around the conquest.

32 The letter is reproduced in Halil nalck, Fatih Devri zerinde Tetkikler ve Vesikalar, 3rd edition (Ankara: Trk Tarih Kurumu, 1995), 217-9.

33 See note 5 above.34 J. H. Mordtmann (Al-Kustantiniyya, Encyclopedia of Islam 2, electronic edition)

argues that this hadith is mostly emphasized by fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Ottoman sources, and that older references are wanting; he thus implies that it was likely manufac-tured by the Ottomans in the first half of the fifteenth century. The hadith is actually older, and can be traced back to Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. AH 241/CE 855), even though it does not figure in the collections of Muslim and al-Bukhari. It was probably fabricated during the Byzantine-Muslim wars in Syria. I am grateful to Mehmetcan Akpnar for determining the origins of this particular hadith.


have an apocalyptic tone and these are easily accessible in more popular hadith collections.35 The Ottomans extensively used al-Bukhari and Muslim. However, when it came to downplaying the apocalyptic signifi-cance of the conquest, they ignored the more popular sayings and pre-ferred to emphasize a relatively obscure hadith at the expense of the others. Similarly, in letters sent to various Muslim rulers after the conquest, only neutral sayings, those few that did not have an apocalyptic content, were quoted.36

Ahmed radically differs from these Ottoman learned men because, rather than veiling the apocalyptic meaning of the conquest, he preferred to take it at face value. He had already dabbled in eschatology in works written before the conquest. After the conquest, however, he espoused eschatology as the history of the present. Especially in his DM he placed the history of the Ottoman enterprise within an apocalyptic panorama that he built thanks to Byzantine and Islamic apocalypticism as well as divination. However, very much like the Ottoman learned men men-tioned above, he lent his support to the ruling sultan, Mehmed II, whom he portrayed as an apocalyptic warrior protecting Muslims from the Blond Peoples. By attributing such a role to the sultan he also started a process that would culminate, in the sixteenth century, in the creation of a messianic and imperialist rhetoric around the Ottoman sultan Sley-man (r. 1520-1566).37

35 For a short assessment of these apocalyptic sayings, see Bashear, Early Muslim-Byz-antine Wars: 178-80; for these sayings as reported in various authoritative sources, see Isam Sayyid, ed., al-Fitan wa alamat akhir al-zaman lil-Imamayn al-Bukhari wa Muslim (Giza: Maktabat al-Nafidhah, 2003); Mustafa Adawi, ed., Al-sahih al-musnad min ahadith al-fitan wa al-malahima va ashrat-al-saa (Riyadh: Dar Balnasiyah lil-Nashr wa-al-Tawzi, 2002); Ahmad Muhammad Abd Allah Ali, Mashahid al-Qiyamah fi al-hadith al-nabawi (Al-Mansourah: Dar-al-Wafa, 1991), especially 39-98.

36 Ahmet Ate, stanbulun Fethine Dair Fatih Sultan Mehmed Tarafndan Gnderilen Mektuplar ve Bunlara Gelen Cevablar, Tarih Dergisi 4, no. 7 (1953): 11-50.

37 Ottoman messianic and apocalyptic thought in the sixteenth century has been mas-terfully studied by Cornell Fleischer. See his Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: The Historian Mustafa l (1541-1600) (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 133-5, 138; idem., The Lawgiver as Messiah: The Making of the Imperial Image in the Reign of Sleymn, in Sleymn the Magnificent and His Time, ed. Gilles Veinstein (Paris: La Documentation Franaise, 1992), 159-74; idem., Mahdi and Millennium. Messianic Dimensions in the Development of Ottoman Imperial Thought, in The Great Ottoman-Turkish Civilization, vol. 3, Philosophy, Science and Institutions, ed. Kemal iek (Ankara: Yeni Trkiye, 2000), 42-52. Also see Barbara Flemming, Shib-krn und Mahd: Trkische Endzeiterwartungen im ersten Jahrzehnt der Regierung Sleymns, in


Ahmed B-cn and the Ottoman Realm in the Fifteenth Century

We do not have a detailed account of Ahmeds life. He was born in the last decades of the fourteenth century in Anatolia. He left the area twice, the first time for attending school in Egypt, and the second time for a pil-grimage to Mecca. During his lifetime he was widely known as Ahmed B-cn. B-cn means lifeless in Ottoman Turkish; he was given this nickname for his pallid appearance, a result of years of ritual fasting. He spent most of his life in a dervish lodge in Gallipoli, together with his brother Mehmed. The brothers are known as Yazczade, i.e. the scribes sons, on account of their father Salihs work as a scribe in the retinue of an Ottoman pasha. Mehmed passed away in 1451, and Ahmed after 1465. They were both members of the Bayrami order of dervishes, and Mehmed appears to have become one of the orders prominent figures in the decades following the death of its founder, Hac Bayram, in 1429. In near-contemporary Ottoman biographical dictionaries as well as modern works, Ahmed and Mehmed are shown considerable respect for their reli-gious devotion, spiritual purity, and scholarly achievements.38 This image agrees with Ahmeds presentation of himself in his works where he often describes himself as a man who rejects worldly pleasures and devotes all his time to prayer and contemplation.

Ahmed lived through a difficult period of the Ottoman enterprise. The Ottoman polity almost disintegrated at the hands of Timur at the Battle of Ankara in 1402. The ensuing interregnum, during which competing Ottoman princes fought each other in Anatolia and the Balkans, lasted from 1402 to mid-1413. Mehmed I (r. 1413-1421), ascending the throne in 1413, had to follow a careful policy of restoring the authority of the Ottoman sultan while accommodating various local powers. Murad II (r. 1421-1444, 1446-1451) was faced with two rebellions by Ottoman princes, in 1421-2 and then in 1423. The rest of his reign was spent fight-ing against newly resurgent enemies in Anatolia and the Balkans. Mehmed II (r. 1444-46, 1451-81), the future conqueror of Constantinople, spent

Between the Danube and the Caucasus, ed. Gyrgy Kara (Budapest: Akadmiai Kiad, 1987), 43-62; idem., Public Opinion under Sultan Sleymn, in Sleymn the Second and His Time, eds. Halil nalck and Cemal Kafadar (Istanbul: Isis, 1993), 49-58.

38 For biographical information about the Yazczade brothers, written with a not very scholarly admiration, see Amil elebiolu and Kemal Eraslan, Yazc-olu, slam Ansik-lopedisi, XIII: 363; Yazcolu Mehmed, Muhammediye, ed. Amil elebiolu, 2 vols. (stanbul: Milli Eitim Bakanl Yaynlar, 1996), 1: 9-42.


two years on the Ottoman throne between 1444-46, when his exhausted father Murad II abdicated in his favor. Murad had to return in 1446 to fend off yet another offensive on the Balkan front, and Mehmed defini-tively became the Ottoman sultan at the death of his father in 1451.39 During his reign the Ottoman polity reached unprecedented military and economic power, and the political and cultural prestige of the Ottoman dynasty increased.

The birth of Ottoman historiography is closely related to the urge to evaluate the cataclysmic developments that rocked the Ottoman realm in the eventful fifteenth century.40 However, the potential relationship between apocalypticism and history-writing or a simple sense of history has not been addressed. Notable scholars of apocalypticism such as Paul Alexan-der41 and Bernard McGinn have touched upon the close relationship between apocalyptic mentality and historical consciousness. The depic-tion of history in apocalypses is heavily colored by the authors [k]nowl-edge of Gods plan and current events are presented in relation to the coming end.42 It is possible to over-emphasize the historical aspects of an apocalyptic text at the expense of its eschatological content.43 On the

39 For further details about this period, see Halil nalck, The Ottoman Empire. The Classical Age 1300-1600 (New York & Washington: Praeger Publishers, 1973), 17-22; M. A. Cook, ed., A History of the Ottoman Empire to 1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press, 1976), 24-31; Halil nalck, Mehemmed I, Encyclopedia of Islam 2, elec-tronic edition; J. H. Kramers, Murad II, ibid; Finkel, Osmans Dream, 27-47. For the difficulties faced by the Ottomans in the Balkans in this period, see Halil nalck, The Struggle for the Balkans, 1421-1451, in A History of the Crusades, ed. Kenneth Setton, vol. 6, The Impact of the Crusades on Europe, eds. Harry W. Hazard and Norman P. Zacour (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 254-75.

40 For the Ottoman historiography of the period, see Halil nalck, The Rise of Otto-man Historiography, in Historians of the Middle East, eds. B. Lewis and P. M. Holt (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1962), 152-67; Victor L. Mnage, The Beginnings of Ottoman Historiography, in ibid., 168-79. For a refreshing discussion on Ottoman historical works in the fifteenth century and a critical assessment of modern debates on Ottoman historiography see Cemal Kafadar, Between Two Worlds. The Construc-tion of the Ottoman State (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995), 90-117.

41 Cf. his seminal article, Medieval Apocalypses as Historical Sources, American His-torical Review 73, no. 4 (April 1968): 997-1018.

42 Bernard McGinn, Introduction: Johns Apocalypse and the Apocalyptic Mentality, in The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, eds. Bernard McGinn and Richard Emmerson (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1992), 9.

43 This risk of over-historicizing an apocalyptic text is discussed, in the case of Islamic apocalypticism, in Cook, Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic, 33-5. In order to overcome this


other hand, as David Cook states, the Muslim apocalyptist, while his writing is heavily biased by his political-theological standpoint, is far bet-ter equipped [than the Muslim historian] to stand back and give an inter-pretation of the events to which he is a witness.44 In this regard, Ahmeds identification of the conquest as the portent of the Last Hour, his reading of contemporary history within the scheme of prophecies, and his ulti-mate identification of Mehmed II as one of the actors of the final battles can be seen as stemming from an urge to produce a cohesive historical explanation about the fortunes of the Ottoman enterprise.

Ahmed was also influenced by, and reacted to, another dynamic: the emergence of a new reading public and the wider use of the Turkish ver-nacular.45 Ahmed and his brother Mehmed assumed the task of providing the people of their land (bu bizim ilin kavmi) with vernacular compen-dia. Ahmeds Envrul-kn (The Lights of the Beloveds/Mystics, here-after Envar) and Acibul-mahlkt (The Wonders of Creation) or his brother Mehmeds Muhammediye (The Book of Muhammad), all writ-ten before 1453, can be interpreted, among other things, as outcomes of this self-appointed mission.46 The sociological profile and reading habits of this new reading public have yet to be ascertained. (Obviously practices such as reading aloud and listening were widespread as well.) Administra-tors and scholars had a working knowledge of reading, of course. The brothers insistence on becoming a bridge between the learning of the Islamic world as expressed in Arabic and Persian and the simple Turkish of the Ottoman readers also shows that the targeted audience included

risk, says John C. Reeves, the textual and religious milieu in which the apocalyptic narra-tive is produced has to be accounted for: Trajectories in Near Eastern Apocalyptic. A Postrab-binic Jewish Apocalypse Reader (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006), 3-7.

44 Cook, Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic, 35. 45 The fifteenth century witnessed, to use an expression by Alessio Bombaci, the birth

of an Anatolian koine which was a result of translations from Arabic and Persian as well as original compositions: Alessio Bombaci, Histoire de la littrature turque, trans. Irne Mlikoff (Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1968), 244.

46 For Ahmeds own words about this mission see Ahmed B-cn, Envrul-kn (Istanbul: Matbaa-yi Osmaniyye, 1301 AH/1883-84 CE), 3-5; Acibul-mahlkt, Biblio-teca Apostolica Vaticana, ms. Borgiani Turco 27, 1b; Mnteha, 3b-4b. On this particular activity of the Yazczade brothers, also see Tijana Krstic, Narrating Conversions to Islam: The Dialogue of Texts and Practices in Early Modern Ottoman Balkans (Ph.D. disserta-tion, University of Michigan, 2004), 45-51, 57. I agree with Krstics suggestion that this mission can be partly interpreted as a form of vernacular religious preaching in the midst of an ever-expanding Ottoman polity.


their fellow mystics (most of whom would not necessarily read Arabic and/or Persian), certain sections of the urban population and also, quite probably, new converts to Islam. The existence of a new reading public also means that the DMs apocalyptic narrative could reach a fairly large number of readers. This explains the tone of urgency and the confidence about the nearness of the Last Hour that is characteristic of the DMs apocalyptic sections: Ahmed speaks, in the DM, as a relatively established author who knows that his work will be widely circulated, and he desires to warn as many readers as possible.

Apocalyptic Affinities

Just as Ahmed reacted to new historical realities and the rise of a new reading public, he was also influenced by religious movements, beliefs, and mentalities that exerted a major impact on the Islamic world in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. He lived in a world in which messianic movements played an important role; he dwelled in an intellectual envi-ronment where divination and prophecy were familiar subjects for every learned individual. Anatolia itself had been the scene of religiously-moti-vated rebellions and movements in recent history. The religious revolts and the Mongol invasion of the mid-thirteenth century, the decline and fall of the ruling Seljuk house, the tensions between the Mongol gover-nors of Anatolia and their overlords in Iran, and the influx of new Turkic tribes provided ample material to apocalyptists in the centuries before Ahmeds birth.47 During his lifetime eyh Bedreddin (d. 1416) and his followers started a messianic religio-political movement that created con-siderable upheaval in Western Anatolia and the Balkans.48 These ideas had

47 Apocalyptic rumors already circulated in Anatolia in the centuries preceding the cap-ture of Constantinople: Flemming, Shib-krn und Mahd, 45-6; Irne Beldiceanu, Pchs, calamits et salut par le triomphe de lIslam: le discours apocalyptique relatif lAnatolie (fin XIIIe-fin XVe s.), in Les traditions apocalyptiques au tournant de la chute de Constantinople, eds. Lellouch and Yrasimos, 19-33; Balivet, Textes de fin dempire, rcits de fin du monde, in op. cit., 8.

48 Bedreddin today is variously reviled as a heretic, praised as a primitive communist, or rehabilitated as a Sunni scholar whose views were misinterpreted. For a detailed bibli-ography of Bedreddin studies and a critical view of ahistorical approaches to Bedreddin see Tayfun Atay, zmlenememi Bir Tarih Sorunu: eyh Bedreddin, in Sosyal Bilim-leri An. Yeni Bir Kavraya Doru, eds. Kaya ahin, Semih Skmen, Tanl Bora (Istanbul: Metis-Birikim, 1998), 161-79.


an impact not only among scholars and dervishes, but the ruling classes as well. It has been mentioned above that the Ottoman sultan and his entou-rage were keenly aware of the new politico-religious ideas. For instance, in Abdlvs elebis Hallnme, presented to Mehmed I in 1414, the Ottoman sultan was compared to the Messiah (Mehdi), like whom he ruled over Muslims with justice and conquered new lands.49 In yet anot-her testimony to these new politico-religious ideas, the Aqquyunlu sultan Uzun Hasan (r. 1453-78), who ruled over a large swath of territory in Eastern Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Iran, utilized political astrology, the science of letters as well as apocalyptic and messianic arguments to legiti-mize his reign.50

It is possible to identify, in Ahmeds case, two more immediate influen-ces. First of all, his father Salih was well-versed in the arts of foretelling the future by interpreting various signs, and he produced a detailed study of natural and atmospheric events, days and months and their specific meanings.51 Second, Ahmed probably came into contact with apocalyptic texts and milieus while studying in Egypt. In the sixteenth chapter of the DM, he refers to a book that includes information about the Hidden Things. He states that this book, written in verse, was preserved in Egypt and intimates that he had access to the books contents.52 The existence of such a milieu in Egypt is supported by the fact that the two most impor-tant figures of Ottoman messianism and apocalypticism in the fifteenth century, the above-mentioned eyh Bedreddin and Abd al-Rahman Bis-tami (d. 1454 or 1455), studied in Egypt.

There are no references to Bedreddin in Ahmeds works but Bistami is mentioned with particular reverence; his Miftah al-Jafr al-Jami (The Key to All Divination, hereafter Miftah) is Ahmeds main source for divina-tion.53 Bistamis works on the science of letters (ilm al-huruf ) and divina-

49 Dimitris Kastritsis, The Sons of Bayezid: Empire Building and Representation in the Ottoman Civil War of 1402-1413 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 217-18, 221-22.

50 John Woods, The Aqquyunlu. Clan, Confederation, Empire, rev. and expanded edition (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1999), 102-6.

51 Yazc Salahddin Salih b. Sleyman el-Malkaravi, emsiyye, Sleymaniye Library, ms. Laleli 2140.

52 The great Muslim scholar and social observer of the fourteenth century, Ibn Khal-dun, also came across books of prophecy in Egypt (Denis Gril, Lnigme de la Sagara al-numaniyya fi l-dawla al-uthmaniyya, attribue Ibn Arabi, in Les traditions apocalyptiques au tournant de la chute de Constantinople, eds. Lellouch and Yerasimos, 143).

53 For Bistami, see Denis Gril, Esotrisme contre hrsie: Abd al-Rahmn al-Bistm,


tion ( jafr) were very popular in the Islamic world and especially in the Ottoman territories, as shown by the large number of his manuscripts found in Ottoman libraries.54 Miftah was the main inspiration behind Ottoman apocalypticism and messianism in the sixteenth century.55 Ahmeds reliance on Bistami indicates that, already around the middle of the fifteenth century, Ottoman literati had begun to use his work. Ahmeds ample use of Bistamis work also helps us establish the connec-tions between the nascent Ottoman apocalypticism of the mid-fifteenth century and the Ottoman messianism of the sixteenth.

Anatolia was not the only place in the Islamic world to fall under the sway of apocalyptic and messianic influences. There was a resurgence of messianic expectations all over the Islamic world in the period following the Mongol invasions.56 In Iran, Eastern Anatolia and Mesopotamia, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, there were a series of religious movements that dabbled in messianism, the science of letters, or ideas such as abolishing confessional boundaries and creating a new, universal religion. The belief that the Last Hour was near was an important element in most of these new religious discourses. This interest in apocalypticism was also observed in Syria and Egypt, as shown by the popularity of works by, for instance, Ibn Kathir (1301-1373).57 These movements have tradi-tionally been studied as precursors to the rise of the Shiite Safavids in the

un reprsentant de la science des lettres Bursa dans la premire moiti du XV e sicle, in Syncrtismes et hrsies dans lOrient seldjoukide et ottoman (XIV e-XVIII e sicle), Actes du Colloque du Collge de France, October 2001, ed. Gilles Veinstein (Paris: Peeters, 2005), 183-95; hsan Fazlolu, lk dnem Osmanl ilim ve kltr hayatnda hvnus saf ve Abdurrahman Bistm, Dvn lm Aratrmalar Dergisi 2 (1996): 229-240; Cornell H. Fleischer, Ancient Wisdom and New Sciences in the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Cen-turies, in Falnama: The Book of Omens, ed. Massumeh Farhad (London: Thames & Hud-son, 2010), 231-43.

54 Toufic Fahd, La divination arabe: tudes religieuses, sociologiques et folkloriques sur le milieu natif de lIslam (Paris and Leiden: Brill, 1966), 228-30.

55 This point is discussed and proven by Cornell Fleischer in his Seer to the Sultan: Haydar-i Remmal and Sultan Sleyman, in Cultural Horizons/Kltr Ufuklar. A Fest-schrift in Honor of Talat S. Halman, ed. Jayne L. Warner, 2 vols. (Syracuse: Syracuse Uni-versity Press, 2001), 1: 290-99.

56 Arjomand, Islamic Apocalypticism in the Classical Period, 275. 57 Ibn Kathir, Ahwal yawm al-qiyamah, ed. Yusuf Ali Budiwi (Damascus and Beirut:

al-Yamamah, 2000); idem., Nihayat al-bidayah wa-al-nihayah fi al-fitan wa-al-malahim, 2 vols., ed. Muhammad Fahim Abu Ibbiyah (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Nasr al-Hadithah, 1968). The lands of the Byzantine Empire as well as Syria are named as the battlegrounds in the apocalyptic battles before the Last Hour in I: 72-79.


Middle East around 1500, and they have been labeled as heterodox.58 This traditional approach, which tends to identify every deviation from orthodoxy with Shiite tendencies, has been already identified and criti-cized by Arjomand. Recent, much-needed studies by Shahzad Bashir, Mohammad Masad, and Evrim Binba finally began to fill an important lacuna by addressing the popularity of messianic and apocalyptic move-ments in the post-Mongol Islamic world beyond the confines of the tradi-tional approach.59 It is now possible to ascertain that these new ideas exerted an impact over scholars, literati and others who described them-selves as Sunnis but who did not have any qualms about extending the frontiers of their knowledge, such as Ibn Kathir, Abd al-Rahman Bistami, and Ahmed himself.

Reading the Drr-i Meknn: Authorship, Composition Date, and Contents

The text of the DM does not include the name of its author or the date of its composition. Despite this initial anonymity, various manuscripts of the work, preserved in Turkish and European collections, are listed under Ahmeds name. Among the three scholars who recently studied the DM this anonymity has been remarked upon only by Laban Kaptein60 while Necdet Sakaolu and Stphane Yerasimos assumed, on the basis of the works being traditionally attributed to Ahmed, that he is the author. This

58 Biancamaria Scarcia Amorettis Religion in the Timurid and Safavid Periods (The Cambridge History of Iran, ed. Harold Bailey, vol. 6, The Timurid and Safavid Periods, ed. Peter Jackson and Laurence Lockhart [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986], especially 610-34), despite its great scholarly merit, is a typical example of the approach that reduces these new political movements to proto-Shiism and limits their impact over and appeal for self-described Sunnis in this period.

59 Shahzad Bashir, Deciphering the Cosmos from Creation to Apocalypse: The Huru-fiyya Movement and Medieval Islamic Esotericism, in Imagining the End, ed. Abbas Amanat (London: I.B. Tauris, 2002), 168-84; idem., Messianic Hopes and Mystical Visions. The Nurbakhshiya between Medieval and Modern Islam (Columbia, SC: South Carolina University Press, 2003); Mohammad Ahmad Masad, The Medieval Islamic Apocalyptic Tradition: Divination, Prophecy and the End of Time in the 13th Century Mediterranean (Ph.D. dissertation, Washington University at St. Louis, 2008); lker Evrim Binba, Sharaf al-Dn Ali Yazd (ca. 770s-858/ca. 1370s-1454): Prophecy, Politics, and Histori-ography in Late Medieval Islamic History (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 2009).

60 Kaptein/DM, 45-7 passim.


anonymity is meaningful since, in all three Abrahamic religions, it is an oft-encountered characteristic of an apocalyptic text. On the other hand, the text itself gives enough clues to ascertain that Ahmed is indeed the author. A comparison of some passages in the DM with the Envar strongly suggests that the author of the two texts is the same person.61 There is also a thematic confluence between the DM and Ahmeds other works. His focus on cosmology, creation, the wonders of the world, Sufism, eschatol-ogy, salvation, and piety finds an ultimate expression in the DM, but this expression culminates in apocalypticism.

The date of the DMs composition is not provided in the work but, once again, there are a few clues that clearly show it was written around the middle of the fifteenth century and, very likely, after 1453. The inclu-sion of various anecdotes about the history and physical characteristics of Constantinople made Stphane Yerasimos conclude that the work must have been composed after 1453 and before 1465, the date of Ahmeds last known work.62 Laban Kaptein more or less concurs with Yerasimos on the date; in his critical edition, he discusses the philological and linguistic aspects of the work and shows that it is a product of the Ottoman literate milieu of the fifteenth century.63 Ahmeds reference to Abd al-Rahman Bistami as having passed away shows that the DM was indeed written after 1454/1455, the date of Bistamis passing. Finally, references to Mehmed IIs sultanate, and the important place accorded to Constanti-nople and the coming of the Last Hour also indicate a post-1453 date of composition.

The DM is distinct from Ahmeds previous works with regard to its tone of urgency and the authors calls to his fellow Muslims that the end

61 A reference to a hadith by Muhammad, reportedly taken from Ibn Arabis Ruh al-Kuds, is found both in Envar and the DM (Envar, 385; Kaptein/DM, 575). A discus-sion of the signs of the Last Hour in Envar and some passages in the DM use a similar language, to the extent of including the same expressions. Cf. Envar, 298: Halkn zerine bir zaman gele ki slamdan resmi kala ve Kurann ismi kala; Kaptein/DM, 560: mme-timin zerine bir zaman gele ki dinin ad kala slamn resmi kala Kurann ismi kala.

62 Yerasimos, Lgendes dempire, 61, 105, 203.63 Kaptein/DM, 44-66. In a work dedicated to the study of the Dejjal (the Deceiver)

in the Islamic tradition Kaptein already argued that the DM was composed around 1455-56: Laban Kaptein, Eindtijd en Antichrist (ad-Daggl) in de Islam Eschatologie bij Ahmed Bcn ( ca. 1466) (Leiden: Onderzoekschool CNWS, Rijksuniversiteit Leiden, 1997), 274. I was able to read only the English summary (ibid., 273-77), appended at the end of the Dutch original. Kaptein states in the English summary that he discusses the problem of the composition date in Chapter 3.1.


is indeed near. In the introduction, the author presents himself as a man of knowledge (ilm) who stays away from the hypocrisy (riya) of his age. He states that he gathered true wealth, i.e. religious knowledge, which he spends to educate others. He argues that this wealth distinguishes him from those who vainly build mosques and hospices to leave their names to posterity.64 In the last chapter of the work, the author once again repeats that life in this world is transitory, and that good Muslims should prepare for the afterlife.65 He then warns his readers that events described in the previous sections (i.e. the attack of the Blond Peoples and the ensu-ing battles, the Last Hour, the Resurrection, and the Last Judgment) are bound to happen soon. This aspect of the work is in tune with other Islamic apocalypses, whose authors usually try to instigate a change of outlook among their readers.66

The DM is an encyclopedic work that provides information about Cre-ation, the wondrous creatures that inhabit the Earth, Alexander the Great and the prophet-king Solomon, the cities of the world, divination, and eschatology. From its introduction to its final chapter it constitutes a streamlined narrative that proceeds from creation to destruction. The life of the world and the fate of humanity are presented in an introduction and eighteen chapters (bb). The first chapter is on skies, the throne and the footstool, the tablet and stylus, paradise and hell, moon, day and stars, and angels.67 This chapter mostly reproduces information found in other medieval Islamic cosmologies.68 Similar themes continue in the second chapter on Earth, the wonders and creatures of Earth, and Hell.69 These sections about creation and cosmology provide the first part of the apoca-lyptic scaffolding. As Walter Schmithals argued, cosmology is particularly

64 Kaptein/DM, 349-50.65 Op. cit., 582-3.66 Cook, Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic, 19-20: The Muslim apocalyptist seeks to cre-

ate a sequence of events that leads up to a final decisive point that is so shattering to his audience that the result of the experience is a change of outlook. Doubtless this would involve people seeing that their everyday lives are insignificant in comparison to the immediate fact of Judgment Day, and the tribulations accompanying it.

67 DM/Kaptein, 354-79.68 For a comparison with Islamic cosmologies, see A. Heinen, Islamic Cosmology. A

Study of as-Suyutis al-Haya as-saniya fi l-haya as-sunniya (Beirut and Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1982), 84-8, 94-106; Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islamic Cosmology: Basic Tenets and Implications, Yesterday and Today, in Science and Religion in Search of Cosmic Pur-pose, ed. John F. Haught (Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2000), 42-57.

69 DM/Kaptein, 380-95.


important for the apocalyptist since it shows to the readers the unchange-able laws set forth by God, and invites them to read the ensuing apoca-lyptic speculations within the same context.70

Historical concerns appear with the third chapter (On this earth and its creatures).71 At the very beginning, it is announced that world history is divided into ten periods of seven thousand years and that the coming of Adam is the beginning of the tenth and last period of seven thousand years.72 This is followed by a short treatment of the history of prophets. It starts with the Fall and extends to the time of Muhammad, announced as the last prophet. Other important figures such as Noah and his sons, Moses, Zachary, Joseph, and Jesus are presented in simple sketches.

The fourth chapter (On the science of geometry, climes, days and hours)73 is followed by one on the wonders of mountains.74 The sixth chapter is on seas and islands;75 the seventh chapter narrates various anec-dotes about the cities of the world (and most notably Constantinople); and the eighth chapter deals with the construction of the temple of Solo-mon, the Church of Saint Sophia, and the Kaba in Mecca.76 As Yerasimos argues in his discussion of DM, the seventh and eighth chapters show the authors affinity with the Byzantine tradition since he reproduces themes found in Byzantine sources about the foundation of Constantinople.77

The ninth chapter focuses on the prophet-king Solomon and his achievements. In the tenth chapter, the story of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba is narrated. The eleventh chapter gives some information about physiognomy and the life spans of various creatures; the twelfth chapter is a collection of stories about cities and individuals that have been objects of Gods wrath; and the thirteenth chapter includes information on the medicinal uses of various plants. The fourteenth chapter reprises the theme of geographical wonders, apparitions, and historical anecdotes, while the fifteenth chapter reproduces the story of the legendary bird Simurg.78

70 Walter Schmithals, The Apocalyptic Movement. Introduction & Interpretation, trans. John E. Steely (Nashville & New York: Abingdon Press, 1975), 19.

71 Kaptein/DM, 396-417.72 Op. cit., 396.73 Op. cit., 418-24.74 Op. cit., 426-33.75 Op. cit., 434-42.76 Op. cit., 444-73.77 Yerasimos, Lgendes dempire, 68-9, 104, 110-1.78 Kaptein/DM, 474-544.


The apocalyptic core of the DM is found in the sixteenth and seven-teenth chapters of the work. The sixteenth chapter is on the mysteries of the science of divination ( jafr), news about the world, portents of divination,79 and the seventeenth chapter focuses on the signs of the Last Hour.80 The work ends with an eighteenth chapter, which is comprised of a long prayer and praise of Muhammad. Here the author issues a stern warning to his fellow Muslims and assures them that the tribulations described previously are about to begin.81

Contents of Ahmeds Apocalypticism

The apocalyptic message of the DM consists of a number of interrelated but distinct layers. The author identifies various social and religious ills in his society and believes these to be among the signs of the Last Hour; he tries to determine the exact date of the end with reference to the Byzan-tine and Islamic traditions as well as divination ( jafr); he acknowledges the conquest of Constantinople as a sign of the Last Hour and heavily relies on the Byzantine tradition to establish the citys inauspiciousness; he determines, again on the basis of divination, the nature and details of the struggles that will pit the Muslims against the Blond Peoples; finally, he identifies the Ottoman sultan, Mehmed II, as an important actor in these struggles. The important building blocks of Ahmeds apocalyptic narrative are discussed below.

The moral apocalypse

The DM can be read, among other things, as a final call to repentance before the impending Last Judgment. The author complains that piety is rare, that judges take bribes instead of administering justice, administra-tors are oppressive and treacherous, and that women stroll alone in streets and marketplaces and merchants cheat on prices. He is especially both-ered by the attitude of religious scholars, who completely surrendered to this corrupt society for fear of losing their privileges.82 These moral and religious criticisms are spread throughout the work, but they become especially pertinent in the context of the later chapters. The seventeenth

79 Op. cit., 546-56.80 Op. cit., 558-78.81 Op. cit., 580-84.82 Op. cit., 560, 495-6, 558-60.


chapter, a study of the portents of the Last Hour, begins with a long dia-tribe on contemporary society.83 This long passage is all the more interest-ing when it is compared to similar passages from Ahmeds Envar, or his brother Mehmeds Muhammediye. In both works, the social and moral ills that will precede the Last Hour are mentioned very briefly, and are not necessarily associated with the authors own society.84 In the DM, on the other hand, moral concerns are directed against contemporary society, and they eventually provide an introduction to more serious consider-ations. In a way, the author uses the more familiar and popular trope of moral decay to bring his audience into his discussion of the End. This rather generic form of social criticism, encountered in the majority of Islamic apocalypses, has been categorized by David Cook as the moral apocalypse.85

How should these moral criticisms be interpreted? David Cook believes that these are oft-used tropes, while Stphane Yerasimos, in his Lgendes dempire, argues that these moral criticisms make the author an opponent of the new Ottoman imperial project centered on Constantinople.86 For a work that is composed between 1455 and 1465, however, it is somehow early to correctly diagnose such a recent development as the foundation of an imperial polity and to take a position against it. More importantly, in his Mnteha, Ahmed portrays Mehmed II as the protector and leader of Muslims who is poised to conquer Rome (see below). It is possible that later readers saw in the DMs moralistic harangues a condemnation of the Ottoman enterprise per se, but these passages of the work reflect a generic form of social and religious criticism rather than political opposition.

Bernard McGinn has eloquently addressed the problem of interpreting the moral criticisms of the apocalyptists. Some apocalyptic texts are not a reaction to a shattering crisis, but rather an accommodation to a new pos-itive situation, such as the conversion of the Roman Empire or the rise of the Reform Papacy . . . It is not so much crisis in itself, as any form of

83 Op. cit., 560. These diatribes are in tune with various apocalyptic texts studied by David Cook. Cf. Cook, Studies in Islamic Apocalyptic, 241, 317-8.

84 See Envar, 368; Muhammediye, 313.85 For a very good summary of the issue of moral apocalypse in the Islamic tradition,

see David Cook, Moral Apocalyptic in Islam, Studia Islamica 86 (1997): 37-69; idem., Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic, 230-68. For a comparison of Ahmeds criticisms with other works in the Islamic tradition, see Cooks selection of texts that display this characteristic in ibid., 333-44.

86 Yerasimos, Lgendes dempire, 61, 69, 195-6.


challenge to the established understanding of history, that creates the situ-ation in which apocalyptic forms and symbols, either inherited or newly minted, may be invoked.87 Similar examples are found in Islamic history as well. For instance, in the period immediately following the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258 and the rise of the Mamluks of Egypt to promi-nence, an apocalyptic and messianic imagery was used to adapt to the existing crisis and legitimize Baybars (r. 1260-1277) as the Mamluk sul-tan.88 In the case of Ahmed too, the main motivation was not to stand against the Ottoman enterprise by producing its moral critique but rather use the tropes of moral apocalypticism to create a readiness among his readers for the message that he intended to deliver.

The Chronology of the End

The laments of the moral apocalyptist may apply to any human society at any given time. The certainty, supported by various chronological proofs, that the End is at hand, is a different matter. For this purpose Ahmed uses prophetic sayings (hadith), the chronological calculations of the Byzantine and Islamic traditions, and dates provided through divination. The cen-tral idea is that the lifespan of the world was determined by God at the time of the Creation and that this lifespan is about to end.

Even though the nearness of the End, particularly emphasized by the fact that Muhammad is the last prophet, permeates Islam from the very beginning, it is also generally accepted that the exact time of the Last Hour is known only by God.89 However, as David Cook argues, merely watching the signs and portents of the End was not prohibited, and even encouraged.90 The idea that the exact date was only known to God was also diluted by a number of hadith that provided the faithful with chrono-logical approximations.

87 Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), 31.

88 Remke Kruk, History and Apocalypse: Ibn al-Nafis Justification of Mamluk Rule, Der Islam, 72, no. 2 (1995): 325-37; Denise Aigle, Les inscriptions de Baybars dans le Bild al-m. Une expression de la lgitimit du pouvoir, Studia Islamica 97 (2003): 57-85.

89 Suliman Bashear, Muslim Apocalypses and the Hour: A Case Study in Traditional Reinterpretation, Israel Oriental Studies 13 (1999): 80.

90 Cook, Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic, 19.


Ahmed indeed uses a number of prophetic sayings. For instance, he says that Muhammads coming is in itself a sign that the Resurrection (al-qiyama),91 the event that follows the destruction of the world and pre-cedes the Last Judgment, is near.92 He quotes another hadith according to which Muslims will not stay on Earth for more than one day. He then explains that one day here corresponds to a thousand years, thus implying that the Last Hour may be scheduled for 1000 AH/1590-1 CE.93 To warn his fellow Muslims about the events that await them in the near future Ahmed then announces that the tribulations that will precede the Last Hour will start around 900 AH/1494-95 CE; Muhammad himself is quoted as having said that portents such as moral decay, plagues, and nat-ural disasters will manifest themselves after 900 AH.

These chronological estimations are also supported by the argument that the lifespan of the world was determined by God as seventy thousand years. Adam descended on Earth in the year 62,960; humans were allot-ted seven thousand years. The Last Hour would thus occur in year 69,960. The Earth would remain empty for forty years before the Last Judgment.94 There are indications that Ahmed was informed about the seven-thousand-year cycle by the Byzantine tradition.95 However, he revises the Byzantine tradition to make it compatible with the Muslim tradition: 1492, determined by various Byzantine scholars to be the end, is too close a date. Muhammads sayings and divination treatises inform him otherwise. Ahmed explains this discrepancy by arguing that the cal-culations of the Byzantine tradition are based on solar years while the Muslims utilize a lunar calendar. Thus, the 7,000 years of the Byzantine

91 Louis Gardet, Kiyama, Encyclopedia of Islam 2, electronic edition.92 DM/Kaptein, 546-7. The reference here is to the famous hadith of the two fingers,

according to which Muhammad stated that his arrival and the Resurrection (or the Last Hour [al-sa] in other versions) are as close to each other as his middle and index fingers. For a discussion of this hadith and its different versions, see Bashear, Muslim Apocalypses and the Hour: 76-80.

93 DM/Kaptein, 575.94 Op. cit., 546.95 For the significance of the year 7000 in the Byzantine tradition, see Podskalsky,

Byzantinische Reichseschatologie, 92-9; Magdalino, The history of the future, 4 passim and throughout; Hanak, Some Historiographical Observations, 43-4; Paul Alexander, His-toriens byzantins et croyances eschatologiques, Actes du XII e Congrs International des tudes Byzantines 2 (Belgrade, 1964): 6-7; Congourdeau, Byzance et la fin du monde, 66-73.


tradition correspond to 7,210 lunar years.96 The end is near, of course, but it is distant enough to allow the cosmic battles predicted by divina-tion to happen.

The Conquest of Constantinople as a Triggering Event

The chronological evidence clearly places Ahmed and his readers in close proximity of the Last Hour. Ahmeds recourse to this particular evidence begs one question here: why is it that, among Ahmeds body of works, the DM is the only one that includes these concerns? Ahmed, as a well-edu-cated individual, was obviously aware of the apocalyptic chronology found in Muhammads sayings but he does not dwell upon it in his previ-ous works. What separates the DM from the others and gives it its apoca-lyptic tone is that it is composed after the realization of a prophecy.

In Ahmeds Envar and his brother Mehmeds Muhammediye, both com-posed before 1453, eschatological issues and the signs of the Last Hour are treated to a considerable extent but no specific dates or chronologies are provided. Ottoman history and recent events do not play any role in their eschatological narratives.97 The Muslim capture of Constantinople and the subsequent attack of the Blond Peoples are mentioned among the portents of the Last Hour. It is remarked that the Muslim conquest of the city will be followed, after seven years, by an attack of the Blond Peoples,98 but the attack is relegated to the distant future. Finally, the tone of these two works radically differs from the DM: the warnings and exhortations encountered in the DM are completely absent from both the Envar and the Muhammediye.

In the DM, Ottoman history and the Ottoman sultan become impor-tant reference points and actors in the apocalyptic theater. Constantino-ples history and the citys apocalyptic significance become important tropes; the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II is singled out as the man who will rule the Ottoman realm during the final troubles; Ottoman lands become the scene for battles between the Muslims and the Blond Peoples. Under

96 DM/Kaptein, 555.97 For these eschatological passages, see Envar, 293-9, 368-83; Muhammediye, 2: 311-32.

For a concise analysis of Islamic eschatology, see Marcia Hermansen, Eschatology, in The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology, ed. Tim Winter (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 308-325. Hermansens emphasis on how eschatology is interwoven with history is particularly relevant for my analysis of the brothers works.

98 Envar, 368.


the impact of the triggering event, that is, the Ottoman conquest of Con-stantinople, Ahmed realizes a passage from eschatology to apocalypticism, to an apocalyptic eschatology that provides a particular view of history and its final events.99 The author of the DM clearly believes that the last age itself is about to end and sees the events of his own time as the last events themselves.100

Ahmed radically differs from those who evaluate the conquest outside its apocalyptic implications. First of all, he espouses a number of Byzan-tine traditions, which no doubt circulated in the Ottoman lands, to emphasize the misfortunes of the city and its eventual destruction at the end of time. As shown by Stphane Yerasimos, the author of the DM is very much concerned about the history of the city and relevant Byzantine anecdotes and prophecies. Constantinople, as it is presented in the DM, is a city that was built at an inauspicious time, incurred Gods wrath, and suffered throughout its history from plagues, earthquakes, and man-made disasters; obviously the Ottoman conquest does not change the fate of the city.101 Rather, the Ottomans inherit a doomed city.

To make things even worse, the Byzantine tradition is supported by the Islamic tradition itself. On the basis of his Muslim sources Ahmed ascer-tains that Constantinople is captured by Muslims not once, but on three separate occasions. The first Muslim (i.e., the Ottoman) conquest is fol-lowed by a Christian onslaught and the Muslims are pushed back into Syria. They reorganize, counterattack, and enter the city a second time. However, while the Muslim soldiers are advancing towards the city center, Satan appears to them, claiming that the Dejjal (the Deceiver, an Islamic apocalyptic figure similar to the Antichrist)102 appeared, and is laying waste to their homes. Panicked, the Muslim soldiers retreat pell-mell and once again return to Syria.103 The definitive Muslim conquest happens

99 McGinn, Introduction: Johns Apocalypse and the Apocalyptic Mentality, 5.100 Bernard McGinn, Early Apocalypticism: The Ongoing Debate, in The Apocalypse

in English Renaissance Thought and Literature. Patterns, Antecedents and Repercussions, eds. C. A. Patrides and Joseph Wittreich (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984), 4, 10-12.

101 Yerasimos, Lgendes dempire, 69, 104, 110-111; DM/Kaptein, 457-8. For the Byz-antine traditions on the foundation of Constantinople, see Dagron, Constantinople imag-inaire, 61-97.

102 A. Abel, Dadjdjl, Encyclopedia of Islam 2, electronic edition.103 DM/Kaptein, 562-3. Here too, there is an interesting mixture of Byzantine and

Muslim/Ottoman traditions. In the Byzantine tradition, after Muslims enter the city, an angel descends from the skies, gives a sword to a pauper who then becomes the Byzantine


only under the leadership of the Messiah, who defeats the Blond Peoples and enters Constantinople.104 This is the reason why Ahmed is concerned about the fate of the city: the city, and the Ottomans who hold it, will be at the center of the first phase of the final battles, which are about to start.

Divination (Jafr)

The Islamic and Byzantine traditions talk about the lifespan of the world and single out the Muslim conquest of Constantinople as a sign of the end. The details of the events that will happen during the period before the end, as well as further proof about the nearness of the Last Hour, are provided by prophecies that are found in divinatory treatises.

Divination in the Islamic tradition rests on the belief that Muhammad transmitted to Ali b. Abi Talib a secret knowledge about the future of humanity, and that this knowledge was written down by Ali on a camel-skin parchment. It was generally accepted that this knowledge was then preserved and transmitted by the Shiite imams, Alis direct descendants. This did not prevent scholars and others who defined themselves as Sun-nis from using divination, as seen in the case of Ahmed as well as many others. Collections of prophecy, astrological tables foretelling the future, deductions on the basis of numerical values attributed to the letters of the Arabic alphabet, apocalyptic narratives, etc. existed under the vague and wide rubric of jafr throughout Islamic history. While jafr has not been openly espoused as part of an orthodox Muslim corpus it was recognized by a fairly large number of scholars and literati who believed that a small number of adepts could dabble in it.105 The relationship between Islamic apocalypticism and jafr was established very early on, as shown by Toufic Fahd. The newly resurgent apocalyptic atmosphere in the Islamic world after the end of the thirteenth century carried this association further, and divinatory techniques became very popular.106

emperor, and Muslims are chased all the way back to the Arabian Peninsula. In Ahmeds version, the Byzantine angel becomes Satan, and the Muslim defeat at the hands of the pauper emperor is turned into a satanic deception and a retreat.

104 Op. cit., 565.105 On jafr, see Toufic Fahd, Djafr, Encyclopedia of Islam 2, electronic edition; idem.,

La divination arabe, 219-24.106 Masad, The Medieval Islamic Apocalyptic Tradition, 8-9, 13 and especially

108-48.


It has been mentioned already that the intellectual atmosphere in which Ahmed dwelled was particularly susceptible to the influences of apocalyp-ticism and messianism. Ahmed probably knew the divinatory master of the time, Abd al-Rahman Bistami, in person. The DMs sixteenth chapter is entitled On the secrets of divination, news of the world, and portents of divination. This chapter is as much an attempt at developing an apoc-alyptic narrative as introducing the Turkish readers of the Ottoman realm to Bistamis work, to vernacularize the jafr literature that was typically found in Arabic-language works. Through Bistami, Ahmed is connected to a larger Islamic tradition of divination. For instance, the information in the Ottoman Turkish passages of the sixteenth chapter as well as a few Arabic quotations are taken, via Bistami, from Kamal al-din Muhammad Ibn Talhas (d. 1254) al-Durr al-muntazam (or -munazzam). This seminal work, written in the first half of the thirteenth century, was studied by Bistami and partly preserved in his Miftah.107

The sixteenth chapter of the DM opens with Ahmeds admission that he uses Miftah as his source, and an invitation for learned readers to con-sult the Miftah for further information. Bistami is called the guide of those who search for the Truth, a scholar who discovers Gods secrets and attri-butes (shaikh al-mukhakkikin, al-alim bi kashf asrar Allah wa ayatihi).108 He is also qualified as shib-i hurf, i.e. a practitioner of the science of letters, one of the most important procedures to determine the secret meanings of words and establish connections between words/letters and dates/present history.109

107 On the link between Bistami and Ibn Talha see Masad, The Medieval Islamic Apocalyptic Tradition, 68. On Ibn Talha and his al-Durr, see ibid., 70-80 and passim. For a comparison of the passages in the DMs sixteenth chapter and al-Durr, cf. DM/Kaptein, 553-4, 555; Kamal al-Din Muhammad ibn Talha, al-Durr al-muntazam fi al-sirr al-azam: bahth ahl al-kashf wa-al-irfan fi alamat Mahdi akhir al-zaman, ed. Majid al-Atiyah (Bei-rut: Dar al-hadi, 2004), 112-3, 145-55, 156, 158-9.

108 DM/Kaptein, 548.109 On the science of letters as a related technique of interpreting the present and pre-

dicting the future, see Toufic Fahd, Huruf (Ilm AL-), Encyclopedia of Islam 2, electronic edition; Denis Gril, La science des lettres, in Les illuminations de la Mecque/The Meccan Illuminations. Textes choisis/Selected Texts, ed. Michel Chodkiewicz (Paris: Sindbad, 1988), 385-487, 608-36 (notes). The pages between 439 and 489 provide a translation of sec-tions on the science of letters from Ibn Arabis al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya, while the preced-ing part has Grils analysis of translated passages and a detailed discussion of the science of letters.


The sixteenth chapter reflects all the aspects of a typical divination treatise.110 The author is very careful in qualifying divination as an extraor-dinary measure that has to be activated only when necessary and only by a handful of initiates. He emphasizes that this knowledge has to be hid-den from those without the required qualifications (n-ehl ).111 Finally, he distinguishes himself from fortune-tellers who, he says, are Satans instru-ments. Ahmed, to the contrary, does not seek individual profit, but searches after the key to a divine message.112

What is divination, as explained in the DM? First of all, the idea is that there is a form of secret knowledge that goes back to God through the Prophet himself. God sends Muhammad an apple, which is mistakenly eaten by his grandchildrens tutor. On eating the apple the tutor enters an ecstatic state and talks about hidden affairs (mugayyebt). He is stopped by Muhammad, but not before his words are heard by some Muslims, who then write them in versified form.113 This accident is not all. There is also a book, called Jafr Ali, (Alis Divination); it includes information about the dynasties that will rule between Muhammad and the Last Hour, and also details about the end itself.114

Indeed, the jafr tradition, together with Byzantine and Islamic apoca-lypticisms, warns Ahmed that the conquest of Constantinople is the beginning of the end.115 On the basis of jafr, Ahmed informs his readers that political fortune (devlet) travels from dynasty to dynasty. It resided in Iran in the past, then shifted to Khurasan and to Cairo. Its next recipient is the Muslim dynasty that will rule over the lands of the Byzantine Empire (Rm); however, soon after this Muslim dynasty takes over Rm, various signs of the Last Hour will manifest themselves. By giving an end to the rule of the last Byzantine dynasty and completing the conquest of Rm,

110 For these typical aspects see Fahd, Djafr, Encyclopedia of Islam 2, electronic edition. 111 DM/Kaptein, 550, 551. The idea that the knowledge of the last things was available

only to a handful of initiates was not foreign to the Christian tradition either: The early idea that the final events were determined far back in the past and foretold in detail to certain chosen men is . . . characteristic . . . The last things can be known; indeed, they can be exactly calculated, but this is only possible for the initiated (Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, trans. D.M.G. Stalker, 2 vols. [New York: Harper, 1962-1965], 2: 301-2; quoted in McGinn, Visions of the End, 8).

112 DM-Kaptein, 536-7.113 Op. cit., 547-8. 114 Ibid.115 Op. cit., 550.


the Ottomans thus become the blessed Muslim dynasty foretold in the books but also find themselves in an apocalyptic setting.116 The Ottoman-ization of the apocalypse is supported by other prophecies too. Accord-ingly, a young man name Mahmud or Muhammad will be the sultan at the time of the tribulations.117 Mehmed, whose name is the Turkish form of the Arabic Muhammad, was enthroned for the first time when he was twelve years old, and definitively succeeded his father when he was nineteen.

Jafr also provides its practitioners with specific dates and geographical locations concerning the final tribulations. The key date, after which there is no return, is 909 AH/1503-4 CE. The East (Sharq) will be devastated by battles and various calamities after that date; Syria and Rm will par-ticularly suffer; the Blond Peoples will relentlessly attack the Muslims; three battles will be waged in the Eastern Mediterranean and around Constantinople, and the citys inhabitants will be decimated; a number of figures identified only by their initials will come forward to play an important role in this new era.118 Indeed, all the knowledgeable and the initiated agree that the tenthand lastcentury will be dominated by catastrophes.119

Mnteha (The Epilogue): Ahmeds Final Judgment

Th

Documents

Sahin 2010 Constantinople and the End Time