sariyannis ghosts vampires and sorcerers

OF OTTOMAN GHOSTS, VAMPIRES AND SORCERERS: AN OLD DISCUSSION DISINTERRED

MARINOS SARIYANNIS

A lively discussion in the H-TURK internet discussion list, back in August 2002, concerned the existence of witchcraft accusations and more generally of supernatural phenomena such as vampires in the Ottoman lands.1 The discussion focused in instances of witchcraft in Ottoman and Balkan folklore, on the one hand, and the socio-political aspects of various forms of witch-hunt (not necessarily dealing with the supernatural), on the other. To begin with, I will cite some highlights from the 2002 discussion. Selim Kuru noted that

Witchcraft or, rather, people communicating and consulting with supernatural powers to tell about the future and/or to heal, were, and still are, common in Turkey with the names of falcı (clairvoyant) and büyücü (magic maker!), but the literature about them is extremely rare. And they are not accepted necessarily as cadı (i.e. witch). This should be due to the fact that even though generally criticized by the religious authorities, and religious elite, they have never been persecuted.

Acaibü'l-mahlukat kind of literature deals with cadı stories, and there are depictions of cadıs in miniatures […] but I have yet to see any account of persecution of a büyücü or a cadı. Also a history of the cin and being possessed by the cin (the verbs cin tutmak, cinlenmek, cinnilere karışmak all refer to such incidents of ‘possession’) is yet to be written.

…vampires are completely lacking, and furthermore ‘horror stories’ have always a funny streak…

Also, against all the criticism, certain Sufi sects unabashedly encouraged supernatural practices: meditation techniques were developed to have

1 See http://www.h-net.org/logsearch/, with keyword “Ottoman witchcraft” (accessed October 2012). The following scholars participated in the discussion thread (August 6-12, 2002): Walter Andrews, Nurhan Davutyan, Matthew Elliot, Boğaç Ergene, Carter V. Findley, Colin Imber, Peter M. Kreuter, Selim Kuru, Anat Lapidot-Firilla, Michael Meeker, Leslie Peirce, Andras Riedlmayer, and Diana Wright. In February 2008, a similar discussion on medieval Islam was conducted in the H-MEM list: see the same link, with keyword “witchcraft / sorcery in Islam” (accessed October 2012).

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encounters with sheikhs in dreams, and journeys through time and place in a wink of an eye, and astrological charts were drawn even for sultans, and all these are recorded by the 'sunni' learned men as, at least, acceptable practice. These were so commonly practiced that it might have prevented the establishment of a strictly orthodox religious definition of 'witchcraft'. Nonexistence of a definitive vocabulary, and total lack of specialized texts also refer to this direction.

Andras Riedlmayer noted the witches, magicians and obscure creatures such as karakoncolos/Gk. καλικάντζαρος to be found in Ottoman literature, especially in Evliya Çelebi’s Seyahatnâme, while Leslie Peirce observed that in comparison with Western witchcraft “[t]he spiritual dimension is not analogous, in that the devil does not figure as an active player […] in accusations against those whose practices are suspect”. Matthew Elliot pointed out three fetvas by the şeyhülislam Ebussuud Efendi (d. 1574) dealing with ghosts or, actually, vampires. Finally, Michael Meeker, who had initiated the discussion, recapitulated it as follows:

Immediately, the discussion raised many of the perennial problems that run through witchcraft studies in anthropology. One of these is the matter of defining the phenomenon. As several commentators have noted, the issue of witches and witchcraft changes from place to place and time to time. […]

Again in anthropological studies, the witch has sometimes been described as the “enemy within.” That is to say, the distinctive feature of the witch is her/his location near at hand among those whom one is otherwise obliged to trust and respect, even to love and support. So the witch is associated with the sickening idea that something dreadful and horrible is at work in the central body of the community, not at its margins, not among outsiders. There is a clear correlation of witches and witchcraft with “tight” communities whose members are driven to depend on one another by reason of the hostility of outsiders. […]

Just because the witch appears on the inside rather than outside, the contextual meaning of the witch is an especially important one. The notion of the threat of the witch (in the form of an enemy within) probably arises even before the identity of the witch is determined, certainly before the identity is proclaimed. […] The more interesting questions are: 1) the link of witches with a sense of an inherent disorder in what is considered good and true and 2) the way in which the narratives of witchcraft (accusations, trials, and confessions) reveal the tenuous structure of the good and true.

[…] I will stop here by stating my intuition that “possession” is somehow a more central issue than witches and witchcraft among the Muslims of the central Ottoman lands. Possession raises questions about what is good and true, that is, about Islam. There are those, usually the learned, who deny that

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possession is possible but it keeps breaking out all the same. In some periods, it is rampant.

The fact that Anatolian and Balkan folklore had several legends and practices that can be classified as witchcraft or vampire traditions is evident;2 in this paper I will try to dwell a little more on the subject of how the Ottoman elite, that is the educated upper classes, dealt with such traditions. As a matter of fact, there are several distinct issues in this aspect. Firstly, witchcraft or sorcery is only a sub-group of magic practices (including for instance healing or divination), which in their turn are not fully equivalent to occult sciences; all the more so, what we may call supernatural includes phenomena such as revenants and ghosts, which are not exactly the object of occult sciences whatsoever.3 For the moment, the state of the art in Ottoman studies does not permit to deal with detail with these subtle distinctions; the material is scarce and interpretations may prove premature.4 For the

2 See e.g. P. M. Kreuter, Der Vampirglaube in Südosteuropa. Studien zur Genese, Bedeutung und Funktion. Rumänien und der Balkanraum (Berlin 2001); M. Köhbach, “Ein Fall von Vampirismus bei den Osmanen”, Balkan Studies 20 (1979), 83-90; M. Ursinus, “Osmanische Lokalbehörden der frühen Tanzimat im Kampf gegen Vampire? Amtsrechnungen (masârıf defterleri) aus Makedonien im Lichte der Aufzeichnungen Marko Cepenkovs (1829-1920)”, Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 82 (1992), 359-374; K. Hartnup, ‘On the Beliefs of the Greeks’: Leo Allatios and Popular Orthodoxy (Leiden 2004), esp. 173ff. It is worth noting that European vampire fiction had initially been influenced by Greek traditions, long before Bram Stoker’s Dracula; see K. Gelder, Reading the Vampire (London 1994), 24ff.

3 The literature on these issues is huge. See e.g. M. Summers, The History of Witchcraft and Demonology (London – Boston 1926 [repr. 1973]); T. R. Forbes, The Midwife and the Witch (New Haven 1966); K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London 1971); N. Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons: An Enquiry Inspired by the Great Witch-Hunt (London 1975); J. B. Russell, A History of Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics, and Pagans (London 1980); R. Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials: Their Foundations in Popular and Learned Culture, 1300-1500 (London 1976); Ibid., Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge 1989); C. Ginzburg, I Benandanti. Stregoneria e culti agrari tra cinquecento e seicento (Torino 1966), trans. as Les batailles nocturnes. Sorcellerie et rituels agraires aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles (Paris 1984); Idem, Storia notturna: Una decifrazione de sabba (Torino 1989), trans. as Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath (London 1992); C. Larner, Witchcraft and Religion. The Politics of Popular Belief (Oxford 1985); B. Ankarloo – G. Henningsen eds, Early Modern European Witchcraft. Centres and Peripheries (Oxford 1990); N. Jacques-Chaquin – M. Préaud eds, Le sabbat des sorciers en Europe (XVe-XVIIIe siècles). Colloque international E.N.S. Fontenay-Saint-Cloud (4-7 novembre 1992) (Grenoble 1993). On Byzantine magic and occultism, see R. P. H. Greenfield, Traditions of Belief in Late Byzantine Demonology (Amsterdam 1988); H. Maguire ed., Byzantine Magic (Washington 1995); P. Magdalino – M. Mavroudi eds, The Occult Sciences in Byzantium (Geneva 2006).

4 Pre-Ottoman Islamic magic, on the contrary, is rather well studied. See e.g. a collection of the relevant literature in Annales Islamologiques 11 (1972), 287-340; G. H. Bousquet, « Fiqh et sorcellerie: Petite contribution à l’étude de la sorcellerie en Islam », Annales de l'Institut des Etudes Orientales 8 (1949-50), 230-234 ; M. B. Smith, “The Nature of Islamic Geomancy with a Critique of a Structuralist’s Approach”, Studia Islamica 49 (1979), 5-38; T. Fahd, La

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scope of this short paper, I will lay emphasis to ghost and vampire stories, i.e. the presence of the spirits of the dead in the world of the living; however, I will also try to touch upon the issue of witchcraft and witch-hunting in Ottoman society, and more generally of the position of the supernatural and the marvelous in the imaginary of Ottoman culture. I will not touch at all the subject of saintly marvels, miracles and apparitions, which deserves a study of its own.5

After these preliminary observations have been made, one could ask more particularly questions such as: How credible did stories involving supernatural powers and apparitions seem, on the one hand, and how they were dealt with, on the other? Were practitioners of sorcery accepted and tolerated, or they were occasionally persecuted, and in what occasions? How would an educated ulema compromise such stories with his religion and his science? The vampirism and ghost cases present a particular interest in this aspect, since they concern the souls or spirits of the dead, and thus touch directly Islamic doctrine, especially eschatology and its view on afterlife.

A Review of the Sources

Most of the witchcraft/vampirism cases mentioned in Ottoman sources were given in the aforementioned discussion. The Ebussuud fetvas are among the most interesting for our thread of thought; moreover, they record in a quite early age (the vampire lore in Central Europe seems to have begun in the mid-1720s, with Austrian reports from Serbia)6 a practice very similar to that observed in the classic vampire stories,

divination arabe. Etudes religieuses, sociologiques et folkloriques sur le milieu natif de l’islam (Leiden 1987); R. Lemay, “L’Islam historique et les sciences occultes”, Bulletin d’Etudes Orientales 44 (1992), 147-159; M. Dols, Majnûn: The Madman in Medieval Islamic Society, D. E. Immisch ed. (Oxford 1992), 261ff; A. Regourd – P. Lory eds., Sciences occultes et Islam, Bulletin d’Études Orientales, Damas 43 (1993); P. Lory, « Soufisme et sciences occultes », in A. Popović – G. Veinstein eds, Les voies d’Allah. Les ordres mystiques dans l’islam des origines à aujourd’hui (Paris 1996), 185-194; R. Gyselen (ed.), Charmes et sortilèges. Magie et magiciens (Bures-sur-Yvette 2002 [Res Orientales XIV]); E. Francis, “Magic and Divination in the Medieval Islamic Middle East”, History Compass 9 (2011), 622-633; N. Gardiner, “Forbidden Knowledge? Notes on the Production, Transmission, and Reception of the Major Works of Ahmad al-Bûnî”, Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 12 (2012), 81-143. I was completing this article when I ran into Z. Aycibin, “Osmanlı devleti’nde cadılar üzerine bir değerlendirme”, OTAM: Ankara Üniversitesi Osmanlı Tarihi Araştırma ve Uygulama Merkezi Dergisi 24 (2008), 55-69. Studying more or less the same sources I study in the first part of this paper, Ms Aycibin proposes a connection of the vampirism cases with the problem of internal migration (i.e., that these stories were used as pretext for the villagers to flee, hence the direct reaction of the state) which, interesting as it may be, seems not very probable to me.

5 On the general concept of miracles in Islam see Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (hereafter EI2), s.v. “Karâma” (L. Gardet) and “Mu’djiza” (A. J. Wensinck); A. Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill 1975), 205-213.

6 See e.g. P. M. Kreuter, “The Role of Women in Southeast European Vampire Belief”, in A. Buturovic and I. C. Schick (eds), Women in The Ottoman Balkans: Gender, Culture and


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namely digging the undead up, impaling and decapitating him or her.7 Three such fetvas have been published.8 In the first, the mufti is asked the reason why the body of some dead people becomes alive in the grave. Ebussuud’s answer is simple: If this is true, it is caused by God’s sacred will. There is a saying that “the wicked souls (nüfûs-ı şerîre) attach themselves (ta’allûk edip) to the corpses of those who while living were connected to them in their morals and practice, using [these corpses] as instruments for evil actions”. This is not improbable for the divine power.

When asked what must be done with such a corpse, Ebussuud argues that it should just be concealed (örtekomak gerektir), since no harm comes thus to a Muslim dead; and he refutes the practice of digging the corpse out and burning it.

The next two fetvas, however, coming from another manuscript, are more specific and also somehow contradictory in relation to the first one.9 According to them, in a village near Selanik/Thessaloniki, a Christian presented himself in the middle of the night to some of his relatives and acquaintances some days after he was dead and buried, asking them to come and visit together other inhabitants, who died the next day in their turn as well. Asked whether the Muslim inhabitants should flee the village in fear of the ghost, Ebussuud answers again that the unbelievers may well be watchful, but the Muslims should do nothing but refer to the authorities. In the next fetva, however, he is asked to suggest an efficient way of dealing with these bodies. The mufti then states that this is a problem too large for human minds and languages to deal with; but one could first stake a scorched stick into the grave as far as it goes. If this is not successful, i.e. if there is still color in the corpse, its head should be cut off and thrown near the feet of the body; or else, the corpse must be dug out and burnt. The contradiction with the first fetva mentioned can be reconciled if we take into account that in that instance, the problematic corpse belonged to a Muslim, while in the second case local customs might perhaps be effective in the şeyhülislam’s thought.

This subtle distinction seems to have faded away some one and a half century after Ebussuud. Markus Köhbach studied such a case, dating in the early 18th

History (London 2007), 231-242. 7 In Bulgaria, this practice might date from the 13th century, as shown by recent excavations near

Sozopol, according to Bozhidar Dimitrov, head of the Bulgarian National History Museum. See http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=139940, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18334106 (accessed September 2012).

8 M. E. Duzdağ, Şeyhülislam Ebussuud Efendi Fetvaları (Istanbul 1983), 197-198 (nos 980-982). 9 For a similar case, that might show that not all fetvas in Düzdağ’s book belong to Ebussuud, see

M. Sariyannis, “Law and Morality in Ottoman Society: The Case of Narcotic Substances”, in E. Kolovos, Ph. Kotzageorges, S. Laiou, M. Sariyannis (eds), The Ottoman Empire, the Balkans and the Greek Lands: Studies in Honor of John C. Alexander (Istanbul 2007), 307-321, at 318 and fn. 2. On the manuscripts used by Düzdağ, see Düzdağ, Ebussuud Efendi Fetvaları 24-26.

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century (in 1701, as it seems).10 An anonymous chronicler recorded a report by the kadi of Edirne, as follows:

The inhabitants of the Maraş village, district of Edirne, declared before the religious court that some signs of evil spirits (ervâh-ı habîse alâ’imi) were observed upon the grave of the previously deceased Bıyıklı Ali, in the graveyard of the aforementioned village; the inhabitants were filled with fear. Indeed, in the province of Rumili, when such signs are observed in some unbeliever’s grave, his body has to be nailed with a stake through his navel; if [the signs] persist, i.e. when the grave is opened the corpse is found in a different position and with its color changed to reddish, then it must be beheaded and his head put next to his feet. If the signs still are not prevented [thus], let them take the corpse out and burn it. Such was the fetva of the late Ebussuud Efendi concerning unbelievers; however, we cannot find such instructions in Arabic books.

The answer (a buyuruldu) is that “in order to dissipate this fancy (vahîme) of the villagers”, the court must send a naib on the spot and authorize him to ask again the inhabitants. If they are to agree that “signs of evil spirits” are still apparent, the naib should open the grave and check whether the color and position of the dead has changed; the kadi is ordered to report again accordingly. The historian does not give us the second report, but records a similar (and presumably contemporary) order to the subaşı of Edirne:

The inhabitants of the Hacı Sarraf quarter in Edirne declared before the court that in the Muslim cemetery signs of witchcraft (câdû alâ’imi) appeared upon the grave of a woman called Cennet, dead three months ago, and that they are overwhelmed with groundless fear (vehm). The court sent a naib who opened the grave; four women examined the deceased woman’s limbs and observed that indeed her corpse was not rotten and her face was red; [according to the report], such phenomena were signs of witchcraft. You are to open the aforementioned grave and do whatever is accustomed (ne vech-ile def’i mü’tâd ise) in order to remove the horror and illusions of the inhabitants.

In these early eighteenth-century documents, it is interesting to note that the authorities were very careful to suggest that all these phenomena were nothing but illusions, and that local customs should be used in order to make the inhabitants feel safe, rather than fight actual ghosts. Besides, this recourse to the local custom of impalement and/or burning of the vampires’ bodies seems to have continued well into the 19th century, as attested by an interesting report on two undead janissaries in

10 Köhbach, “Ein Fall von Vampirismus” (on the dating of the events, see in particular p. 87). The Ottoman text is now published as A. Özcan (ed.), Anonim osmanlı tarihi (1099-1116 / 1688-1704) (Ankara 2000), 148-149.


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Tirnovo, which were dealt with by a Christian professional with a stake, boiling water and finally fire (1833).11 Moreover, Michael Ursinus studied three records from Bitola (Manastır), dated from the same period (1836, 1837, 1839), on payments for “experts on witchcraft” (câdûcılar, câdû ustâdları) to be called upon signs of magic that reportedly had been observed in the area.12 The phrasing is very similar to the early 18th-century documents cited above, and Ursinus concludes that the Bitola incidents were very probably concerning vampirism as well.

But vampirism in Ottoman literature is not an exclusively Balkan specialty. An extremely interesting description by Evliya Çelebi (1611-1684) concerns a sort of “witches’ Sabbath” in the Obur mountains, between Circassia and Abkhazia in the Caucasus.13 He claims being an eye-witness to a fight between the oburs of the Circassian and the Abkhazian tribes, which took place in 1666 (in fact, Evliya gives the exact date: 20 Şevval 1076, which corresponds to April 24 or 25). Oburs, he explains, are the wizards and sorcerers of these tribes (oburları, ya’ni sehhâr ve sehereleri... obur demek sehhâr câzûlara derlermiş); the Abkhazian ones started the attack, flying upon every kind of house utensils, while their Circassian counterparts were flying on dead horses and ship masts, armed with snakes and heads of various animals (human included). The fierce battle lasted for six hours, until the cocks crowed. The next day, Evliya and his companions visited the battlefield and found it full of every conceivable utensil, corpses of various animals, corpses of dead people out of their graves, and so on. This, reminiscent of European descriptions as it may be, might be little more than an entertaining story; or else, it could reflect actual shamanistic beliefs, enhancing thus the much debated thesis by Carlo Ginzburg on the folklore and shamanistic background of the Sabbath descriptions.14 What follows, on the other hand, is very similar to the Balkan vampire tales:

11 The report was published in the state gazette, Takvîm-i Vekâyi’, issue no. 68 (21 Cemaziyülevvel 1249). See Aycibin, “Osmanlı devletinde cadılar”, 59. Đlber Ortaylı (Đmparatorluğun en uzun yüzyılı, 3rd ed. (Istanbul 1995), 32 fn) maintains that the news were made-up, as a result of the hatred of the state toward the janissaries even after 1826.

12 Ursinus, “Osmanische Lokalbehörden der frühen Tanzimat”. 13 Y. Dağlı, S. A. Kahraman, R. Dankoff eds, Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnamesi, vol. 7 (Istanbul

2003), 279-280; cf. J.-L. Bacqué-Grammont, “Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi’nde büyü”, in N. Tezcan (ed.), Çağının sıradışı yazarı Evliyâ Çelebi (Istanbul 2009), 87-90 at 90.

14 Ginzburg’s analysis of European witch trials, starting from the Benandante wizards of sixteenth-century Friuli (NE. Italy), drove him to the conclusion that European folklore, from the Italian peninsula to the Baltic sea and Siberia, shares a common shamanistic background of battles with flying witches fighting over fertility. See Ginzburg, Les batailles nocturnes and more comprehensively Idem, Ecstasies; Idem, “Deciphering the Sabbath”, in Ankarloo – Henningsen, Early Modern European Witchcraft, 121-137; Idem, « Les origines du sabbat », in Jacques-Chaquin – Préaud eds, Le sabbat des sorciers en Europe, 17-21; on “shamanist” elements in Hungarian witch cases see G. Klaniczay, “Hungary: The Accusations and the Universe of Popular Magic”, in ibid., 219-255 at 243ff. However, Ginsburg’s thesis is still debatable, the common view being that witch trials reflect the ideas of the persecutors rather than actual folk rituals (see e.g. Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons; Kieckhefer, European Witch

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There is no plague in these lands. Whenever a man gets a little sick, or even if he doesn’t, in the kara konco[lo]z nights the oburs drink the blood of the desired sick or healthy person… killing him; thus, oburs may become normal (obur oburluğundan halâs olur), although the signs of their oburship (obur alâmeti) stay in their eyes.

In this region there are Circassian wise old men who can discern an obur, i.e. who can tell a wizard (obur tanıtıcı ya’ni câdî sihirbâz bilici). The relatives of the dead give them money, and they go to the graves of recently deceased oburs to check the ground for signs that these latter ones went out of their tombs. And indeed, when the people gather and dig the grave, they see that [the obur’s] eyes are like cups full of blood, and that their face has become all red from the human blood they have drunk. Then they take the filthy corpse of the cursed obur out of the grave and they nail a wooden stake into his navel; with God’s help, the magic is thus destroyed. And the man whose blood the obur had been drinking is saved from death… But some people, even after having found the obur in his grave and nailed thus his corpse… take the filthy carcass, with the stake still in his navel, and burn it, lest another living obur enter the body.

We could note here en passant that the reference to the plague (Evliya adds later that “so there is no plague in the Circassian lands, but truly the trouble of these oburs is worse than the greatest plague”) brings to mind another of Evliya’s descriptions, purportedly conveyed by his father, featuring the “army of the plague” (ta’ûn askeri), consisting of both “benevolent and wicked souls” (ervâh-ı tayyibe, ervâh-ı habîse) and ready to attack Istanbul on the eve of an epidemic.15 Now, back in Circassia, Evliya goes on explaining that whenever someone suspects an obur of drinking his blood, these wise obur-tellers check the suspect’s eyes. If they are full of blood, the obur is bound in chains until he starts to confess: “Yes, it was me that drank So-and-So’s blood… When I was buried next to my obur grandfathers and my

Trials; and cf. Peter Burke’s concluding remarks, “The Comparative Approach to European Witchcraft”, in Ankarloo – Henningsen, Early Modern European Witchcraft, 435-441). For the classical descriptions of the Sabbath see Summers, The History of Witchcraft, 110-172. In his recent book, Ginzburg mentions Evliya’s description, although with certain mistakes (the day is converted to 28 instead of 24/25 April, while the name of the wizards/witches is rendered uyuz instead of obur due to the lacking transcription of the older Evliya editions). See Ginzburg, Ecstasies, 163-164.

15 The benevolent souls are clad in white and the maleficent in black; whoever is struck by the former would be saved, by the latter would die. The chieftains of the two armies dictate the victims’ names to a dervish, who brings the list to Murad IV. The Sultan does not believe him, but then a plague devastates the city for fourty days until all the names in the list die. See Y. Dağlı, S. A. Kahraman eds, Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnamesi, vol. 4 (Istanbul 2001), 341-342.


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obur fathers, my body did not rot; and sometimes I flied to the skies to fight; and I did all this in order to live more (çok yaşamak içün etdim)”.

Evliya adds that these oburs form a separate lineage (soy), refusing to enter into marital relations with the rest of the Circassians, and that most of these oburs live in the Moscovian, Cossack, Polish and Czech lands; but “it is certain that they are the kara koncolos of the Ottoman territories (Rûm’da)”. The word obur appears once more in his work, this time in a Balkan context that puts forth the possibility of the name “vampire” having come from eastwards. When speaking of Oburça, a small village near Shipka in modern central Bulgaria, Evliya notes that “obur means in the Tatar language a wizard, a witch, or someone who returns from the grave (câdûya ve sihirbâz avrete ve mezârda dirilene derler)”.16 The same meaning is attested in Rize, in the Eastern Black Sea coast, where, one has to note, Circassian refugees fled after the conquest of their lands by the Russians in the early 1860s. Andreas Tietze considers the word of Slavic origin,17 and indeed it can be supposed that the Circassians borrowed these traditions by their Russian neighbours – but can one exclude the opposite? This is a question for specialists to answer;18 however, the association of those revenants with sorcerers’ fights might indeed be a Slavic influence.19

As for the mysterious kara koncoloz and his infamous nights, the word comes from Greek καλικάντζαρος (of uncertain etymology), a kind of goblin that appears in the twelve days between Christmas and the Epiphany and plays tricks to people in Greek folk traditions.20 These are the original kara koncoloz nights or even days,

16 S. A. Kahraman, Y. Dağlı eds, Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnamesi, vol. 6 (Istanbul 2002), 91. 17 A. Tietze, “Slavische Lehnwörter in der türkischen Volksprache”, Oriens 10/1 (1957), 1-47, at

31-32 (no. 226); cf. R. Dankoff, Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi okuma sözlüğü (Istanbul 2008), 183. On the Circassian expulsion to the Ottoman Empire see EI2, s.v. “Čerkes”.iii (H. Đnalcık); Đslam Ansiklopedisi, s.v. “Çerkesler” (M. Bala).

18 German Vampir (and its other West European forms) come from a Slavic word of various forms (Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian вампир (vampir), Czech upír, Ukrainian упир (upyr), Russian упырь (upyr'), all derived from Old East Slavic упирь (upir'). It has been proposed (first by Franz Miklosich) that there is ultimately a Turkic etymology (Tatar ubyr, “mythological creature”; Chuvash văpăr, “bad ghost of a witch, appearing in different forms”). See M. Vasmer, Russisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 4 vols (Heidelberg 1950-1958), s.v. „упырь“; K. M. Wilson, “The History of the Word Vampire”, Journal of the History of Ideas 46 (1985), 577-583 and repr. in A. Dundes ed., The Vampire: A Casebook (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press 1998), 3-11; U. Dukova, Die Bezeichungen der Dämonen im Bulgarischen (Munich 1997), 96-100; P. M. Kreuter, “The Name of the Vampire: Some Reflections on Current Linguistic Theories on the Etymology of the Word Vampire”, in P. Day (ed.), Vampires: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil (Amsterdam – New York 2006), 57-63.

19 See E. Pócs, « Le sabbat et les mythologies indo-européennes », in Jacques-Chaquin – Préaud eds, Le sabbat des sorciers en Europe, 23-31 at 30; Ginzburg, Ecstasies, 160.

20 See e.g. Hartnup, ‘On the Beliefs of the Greeks’, 29-30; Ginzburg, Ecstasies, 168-169. As late as in early nineteenth century, the fraction of the Old Notables of the Aegean island of Samos

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often mentioned by Evliya in Christian context;21 a slight nuance of the Circassian terror might be found in the description of a cavern in an Istanbul monastery, from which “the sorcerers (câdûlar) called kara koncoloz” go out every night and stroll the city in carriages till dawn during the very cold winter months.22 Interestingly, the word passed into Algerian Arabic as qârâqendlûz with the meaning “vampire, werewolf”.23

So much of vampires; another disquieting case where folk tradition challenges the “legitimate” views on afterlife concerns ghosts, i.e. spirits of explicitly and definitely dead people who for one or another reason appear in front of the living. Ghost stories seem not to be a very common feature in Ottoman literature, and as we will see such apparitions are often attributed to non-human spirits, namely jinn;24 however, we should remark that this may be due to the relative lack of interest for such texts rather than to the lack of stories themselves. Moreover, as we shall see, a distinction must be made between fictional stories and stories that are related as real, and this distinction is not always easy to see.

The poet Cinânî (d. 1595) composed at the Sultan’s request Bedâyiü’l-âsâr, a collection of prose stories, in 1590. This highly interesting work, published very recently by Osman Ünlü,25 contains ninety-nine short stories and vignettes. In his own words, Cinani intended to collect stories about women and their stratagems, wars and battles, and “strange deeds and wonders from near and afar” (acâ’ib-i umûr ve garâ’ib-i nezdîk ü dûr); this last part contains twenty mirabilia, collected from various oral sources, as it seems, from Anatolia, Africa and the Balkan peninsula.26 Ranging from “natural monsters” (e.g. Siamese twins) to “supernatural

were nick-named Kallikantzaroi because of “their alleged habit of meeting during the night, since they supposedly could not realise their ‘dark’ plans in the daylight”: see S. Laiou, “Political Processes on the Island of Samos Prior to the Greek War of Independence and the Reaction of the Sublime Porte: The Karmanioloi-Kallikantzaroi Conflict”, in A. Anastasopoulos (ed.), Political Initiatives ‘From the Bottom Up’ in the Ottoman Empire. Halcyon Days in Crete VII: A Symposium Held in Rethymno, 9-11 January 2009 (Rethymno2012), 91-105 at 93.

21 E.g. O. Ş. Gökyay ed., Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnamesi, vol. 1 (Istanbul 1996), 22, 255. 22 Ibid., 25. 23 H. and R. Kahane – A. Tietze, The Lingua Franca in the Levant. Turkish Nautical Terms of

Italian and Greek Origin (Urbana 1958), 521-523 (no. 783). 24 Possession by spirits is more common than actual ghost stories in Ottoman texts. One may

explore such stories as a challenge put against the “presumably very ancient cultural differentiation” Ginzburg makes between the Eurasian shaman who rules the spirits and the African possessed person who “is at the mercy of the spirits and is ruled by them”. See Ginzburg, Ecstasies, 249, citing L. de Heusch, « Possession et chamanisme », in Pourquoi l’éspouser ? et autres essais (Paris 1971), 226ff.

25 O. Ünlü (ed.), Cinânî: Bedâyiü’l-âsâr, 2 vols (Harvard 2009). 26 On this genre cf. T. Fahd, « Le merveilleux dans la faune, la flore et les minéraux », in

Association pour l’Avancement des Études Islamiques – Centre de littérature et de linguistique arabes du CNRS, L’étrange et le merveilleux dans l’Islam médiéval. Actes du colloque tenu au


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wonders” (e.g. trees that cannot be removed, water sources that emanate sounds of music, or mummified birds in Egypt), these mirabilia contain also four ghost stories, classified in themselves as they constitute the last four items of the collection.27 The first one resembles E. A. Poe’s famous story “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar”: it relates that in the castle of Dıraç (Durrës, Durazzo), “by God’s order” souls of dead people entered the body of moribund persons (mukaddemen fevt olanlardan birinün rûhı Allahun emriyle cesedine duhûl edüp) and spoke with the latter ones’ voice, asking their relatives for prayers:

For instance he says: “Hey tyrants, why don’t you inspect my case? I am So-and-so, son of So-and-so; they torment me greatly in the Hereafter (âhiretde). I had committed this or that sin; my torment is off-limits, and you, you stay in my house and you wear my clothes and you spend my money: why don’t you read any prayers for my soul (cânum), why don’t you make any charity for my sake?” Thus he speaks in the language of the moribund, and those who know understand. […] If [the ghost] is a Muslim, they bring an ulema, who reads some verses from the Koran and drives it away; if it is a Christian, they bring a priest who reads from the Holy Gospel […] Let this not be conceived as farfetched or marvelous, for it has often happened that a soul or spirit (rûhı yahud cin) enters a corporeal form and speaks, with God’s permission. Such stories are well-known truth.

In the second story, a spirit (cin) enters a concubine (first described as “epileptic”, masrû’a) in Egypt; an expert (mu’âzzim)28 comes to drive it away, but the spirit speaks Persian so the narrator has to translate. The spirit says that it is in love with the girl and refuses to leave her; the expert ties her legs and starts beating her, then burns a piece of paper into her nostrils and ears, and the spirit at last leaves the girl’s body after agreeing upon Salomon’s seal not to possess her again. The end of the story is quite interesting, as it shows that Ebussuud’s fetva was well-known at this age as well as more than a hundred years later:

There are many stories of this kind, and there is no need to tell them since they are so famous. Many have related, and it cannot be denied, that wicked spirits (ervâh-ı habîse) cling to dead bodies (beden-i meyyit), so that these

Collège de France à Paris, en mars 1974 (Paris 1978), 117-165 ; M. Rodinson, « La place du merveilleux et de l’étrange dans la conscience du monde musulman médiéval », in ibid., 167-227; and (on its European counterparts) J. Le Goff, L’imaginaire médiéval (Paris 1985) ; Idem, « Préface » in Gervais de Tilbury, Le livre des merveilles (Paris 1992), ix-xvi.

27 Ünlü (ed.), Bedâyiü’l-âsâr, II: 334-337. 28 The word is not found in Ottoman dictionaries; it is derived from azâ’im, “incantations, spells”.

See Türk Diyanet Vakfı Đslam Ansiklopedisi (henceforth TDVĐA), s.v. “Azâ’im” (S. Uludağ). Usually it means “exorcist”, especially in relation with magic healing of madness (Dols, The Madman in Medieval Islamic Society, 276-278).

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become enchanted (câzû olmak) and make strange movements. It is even lawful (şer’î) to nail to the ground bodies enchanted like this, or to cut their heads, or –if those measures bring no result– to burn them. There are illustrious fetvas on this issue by the şeyhülislam Ebussuud Efendi.

The third story concerns a maid (orfana) in the Morea (Peloponnese), whose master used to come and have intercourse with her three or four months after his dead. She asked Piri Dede, an ulema of the region, for help; the ulema ambushed the ghost (that appeared in broad daylight) and attacked it with an iron skewer: the ghost vanished, and ten days later the girl died, and was buried next to her master. As for the fourth and last story, it is about a ten-year-old girl in a nomadic Yörük tribe near Sanduklı, whose right thigh was possessed by a jinn.29 The spirit spoke in a whistle-like voice, without the girl opening her mouth, and gave advice and oracles, with the girl’s brother as intermediary. The narrator of the story himself, an assistant to the court, took the spirit’s advice on a mill he was commissioned to construct.

Could such marvelous and ostensibly unbelievable stories be attributed to the Ottoman authors’ narrative techniques (as Ottoman fictional poems and stories abound in witches, ghosts and jinn)30? Robert Dankoff makes such a case concerning Evliya Çelebi; speaking of a charming story about a Bulgarian witch, for instance, he considers it mainly of “entertainment value” and he comments that “there is a thin line between magic as entertainment and magic as the manipulation of supernatural powers”.31 Did Evliya really believe these exaggerations, to say the least? Probably not, although we might suppose that he related stories that he had heard and perhaps believed, only presenting himself as an eye-witness to add credibility; but then, did he expect his audience to believe them? Or did he deliberately try to entertain an audience that would expect pure entertainment mixed to the hard facts of a travel account? Such questions are beyond the scope of this article and cannot be discussed here; however, a thorough study of magic and

29 Although it might be completely irrelevant, here one must cite Carlo Ginzburg’s analysis on the motive of lameness as connected to the world of the dead: Ginzburg, Ecstasies, 226ff.

30 See e.g. the rest of Cinani’s work, or its more or less contemporary M. Çakır – H. Koncu eds, XVI. yüzyıldan bir aşk hikâyesi: Medhî’nin Şîr-i dilîr bâ-mihr-i münîr’i (Istanbul 2010). Edith Gülçin Ambros, who notified me of this latter edition, kindly informed me that she is preparing an article on Ottoman prose narrative techniques with a high relevance to such questions.

31 R. Dankoff, An Ottoman Mentality. The World of Evliya Çelebi (Leiden 2004), 202-203. The story (which Dankoff gives in translation) can also be found in S. A. Kahraman, Y. Dağlı eds, Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnamesi, vol. 3 (Istanbul 1999), 210-211. The woman is said by a peasant to be of “a different breed. She used to turn into a witch once a year on a winter’s night, but this year she turned into a hen”. Interesting, what Dankoff translates as “witch” is our well-known kara koncolos (ol karı başka soydur. Kış geceleri yılda bir kerre eyle kara koncolos olurdu. Ammâ bu yıl tavuk oldu); moreover, the description reminds of the Circassian obur who also form a “separate breed”. On the transformation of Slavic witches to hens cf. Pócs, « Le sabbat et les mythologies indo-européennes », 30.


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supernatural elements in Ottoman literature would be very useful, for instance in clarifying the mutual feedback between beliefs and fiction or the development of stereotypes.32

On the other hand, it is important to note that Cinani, an educated ulema and all the more so a teacher (müderris),33 narrates his ghost stories (in sharp contrast to the rest of his book, which explicitly contains entertaining material for story-tellers) as true events related from trustworthy and reliable sources, whose names and references he gives meticulously. The curious reference (in his first story) to the efficacy of various religious exorcisms according to the religion of the ghost enhances the sincerity of his narrative. Similar mirabilia are occasionally recorded in history books, as for instance when Abdülkadir Efendi (d. ca. 1644) describes a cave in Şehrizor (modern Northern Iraq) as a “lair of sorcery” (câzûlar yurdu), where people were trapped and killed with magic.34 As for the vampire stories recorded in the şeyhülislam’s or the kadi’s archives, the very nature of our sources shows that Ottoman administration took these stories quite seriously. On the one hand, it had to handle the local population’s fears and “illusions”; on the other, there are no signs that it questioned the actual happening of vampire-like phenomena, even if it kept its doubts on their real causes.

Witchcraft, Sorcery, Persecution –or the Lack of It

A note on terminology might be in place here. In the examples given above, we saw the use of the expressions “evil souls/spirits”, on the one hand, and “witchcraft” (cadu, cazu), on the other, concerning what might be called in modern terms vampirism. The word câdû, of Persian origin, means “witchcraft, sorcery” and is already attested in Ottoman Turkish in a mid-fifteenth-century collection of stories, the famous Ferec ba’de’ş-şidde, as well as in Yazıcıoğlu Ahmed Bîcan’s contemporary Dürr-i meknûn (where it denotes the Pharaoh’s magicians who practice sorcery, sihr);35 it was in the same use that we found it in one of the

32 Cf. Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, 105-115 for a review of courtly medieval European literature regarding magic.

33 On his biography see Ünlü (ed.), Bedâyiü’l-âsâr, I: 6-8. 34 Z. Yılmazer (ed.), Topçular Kâtibi ‘Abdülkâdir (Kadrî) Efendi Tarihi (Metin ve tahlîl) (Ankara

2003), 914. 35 F. Steingass, A Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary (London 1892), 349; A. Tietze,

Tarihi ve etimolojik Türkiye türkçesi lugatı / Sprachgeschichtliches und etymologisches Wörterbuch des Türkei-Türkischen, v. I (Istanbul – Wien 2002), 412, s.v. “cadu/cazu/cazı”; G. Hazai – A. Tietze (eds), Ferec ba’d eş-şidde, „Freud nach Leid“ (Ein frühosmanisches Geschichtenbuch), 2 vols (Berlin 2006), 1: 216; N. Sakaoğlu (ed.), Yazıcıoğlu Ahmed Bîcan: Dürr-i meknun (Saklı inciler) (Istanbul 1999), 107 (cf. also 74 on “the sorcerers of Babylon” used by Nimrud). Sevan Nişanyan’s online etymologic dictionary locates the first appearance of the word in Aşık Paşa’s Garib-nâme (1330): http://www.nisanyansozluk.com/?k=cad%C4%B1. Meninski’s 1680 dictionary contains only the “sorcery, witchcraft” meaning (François de Mesgnien [Meninski], Thesaurus linguarum orientalium…, vols I-VI, Vienna 1680, I :1543),

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examples by Cinani. As far as I can see, the meaning “vampire (spectre) / Vampyr (Gespenst)” is first recorded in Julius Zenker’s dictionary (1866), while James Redhouse (1890) offers the somehow “westernized” (with its reference to blood-sucking) definition “a dead person superstitiously supposed to return to earth, in order to suck the blood of persons asleep, a vampire” (and câdûluk etmek: “to act as a vampire”; câdılanmak: “to become a wizard, witch, hag, or vampire”, etc.).36 Although in Evliya’s use it may denote an actual vampire, it still means “witchcraft” in general (for instance, Evliya couples it with sihirbâz, “sorcerer”). In our examples, it is only to be found with this meaning after the beginnings of the eighteenth century, in the anonymous chronicler’s account of the Edirne judge. Even there, however, a possible interpretation is that it does not mean “vampire”, only implying that the strange signs were the result of unspecified witchcraft. The way Cinani reformulates Ebussuud’s fetva (using the word cazu/cadu, which is not to be found in his prototype) enhances this view: wicked spirits, he says, enchant the corpses and make them move.

Now, stories about jinn abound in Ottoman literature37 and, as Cinani himself notes, are not inconsistent with Islamic theology.38 Indeed, as noted in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, “[i]n official Islam the existence of the djinn was completely accepted, as it is to this day, and the full consequences implied by their existence were worked out”; in fact, the jinn are a third category of beings, distinct

while Jean Daniel Kieffer and Thomas-Xavier Bianchi, Dictionnaire turc-français à l’usage des agents diplomatiques et consulaires, des commerçants, des navigateurs et autres voyageurs dans le Levant, 2 vols (Paris 1835-1837), I : 352, give an emphasis to the female element: “câdû, câdı: Sorcier et surtout sorcière – Gidi câdû: Vilaine sorcière”. Indeed, in literary works such as Medhî’s Şîr-i dilîr bâ-mihr-i münîr, a love romance with folk-tale elements composed in the late sixteenth century, plenty of wicked câdû appear, all female: see Çakır – Koncu eds, XVI. yüzyıldan bir aşk hikâyesi, 25-27 and passim. Unfortunately, the lack of gender in Turkish grammar makes many of the references of the word in Ottoman literature unclear and “sex-blind”. On the use of the word in medieval Persian literature, cf. M. Gaillard, « Foi héroique contre magie démoniaque: une lutte exemplaire », in Gyselen (ed.), Charmes et sortilèges, 109-163; M. Omidsalar, “Magic ii. In Literature and Folklore in the Islamic Period”, Encyclopaedia Iranica, online edition, 2012, available at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/magic-ii-in-literature-and-folklore-in-the-islamic-period (accessed on October 2012); Omidsalar notes that the words jâdu (câdu) and sehr (sihr) have some “negative connotation” (in contrast with afsun).

36 J. T. Zenker, Dictionnaire turc-arabe-persan (Leipzig 1866; repr. Hildesheim 1967), I:339; J. W. Redhouse, A Turkish and English Lexicon (Constantinople 1890), 634, s.v.

37 There are more jinn stories in Cinani’s work than those described, but they are supposed to be much nearer to fiction than the last ones. See the analysis by Ünlü (ed.), Bedâyiü’l-âsâr, I: 87-91.

38 See Ünlü (ed.), Bedâyiü’l-âsâr, I: 88; I did not have access to: G. Scognamillo – A. Arslan, Doğu ve Batı kaynaklarına göre cinler (Istanbul 1993); A. O. Ateş, Kuran ve hadislere göre cinler – büyü (Istanbul 1995); or S. Ateş, Đnsan ve insanüstü: Ruh – melek – cin – insan (Istanbul 1979).


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from both humans and angels, and according to some scholars the Devil (Đblis) is but one of them.39 As a matter of fact, they were also a plausible means of explaining aca’ib or mirabilia, such as those described by Cinani: in Yazıcıoğlu Ahmed Bîcan’s famous mid-fifteenth century Ottoman cosmography, we read that after the creation of Man, the jinn were expelled to islands, but “now from time to time they remember their old abodes and return, settling in the roots of trees or near waters and sources. These places are called ayazma [sacred fountain, Gk. αγίασµα]… most unbelievers believe in these, saying that this or that source or tree is exalted (ulu)”.40

Moreover, the science of commanding jinn and demons (azâ’im) was accepted by paragons of Ottoman science such as Taşköprüzâde or Kâtib Çelebi; the latter makes a distinction between “permissible” (mubâh) spells, which are made through the names of God and Koranic recitations, and forbidden ones, made with charms, sorcery and talismans. However, he specifies that both kinds of magic cannot be performed but with God’s help, since it is Him who has ordained that the jinn can be subdued to man.41 Elsewhere, Kâtib Çelebi maintains that while practicing sorcery (sihr) is undoubtedly prohibited, knowing its ways is permissible or even commendable: for instance, through magic one may discover a false prophet or a murderer. In fact, he says, this is a natural science based on the deep knowledge of stars, minerals and herbs; it is secrecy that makes people wonder.42 And indeed, recent studies show that while “sorcery” (sihr) was a rather reproachful activity in early modern Islam, occult sciences such as those described by Kâtib Çelebi constituted an integral part of Ottoman scholarship of this period43 (although

39 EI2, s.v. “Djinn”.II (D. B. MacDonald – [H. Massé]); TDVĐA, s.v. “Cin” (A. S. Kılavuz); Dols, The Madman in Medieval Islamic Society, 212ff; D. De Smet, « Anges, diables et démons en gnose islamique. Vers l’islamisation d’une démonologie néoplatonicienne », R. Gyselen (ed.), Démons et merveilles d’Orient (Bures-sur-Yvette 2001 [Res Orientales XIII]), 61-70. On Iblis being a jinn see EI2, s.v. “Iblîs” (A. J. Wensinck-[L. Gradet]).

40 Sakaoğlu (ed.), Yazıcıoğlu Ahmed Bîcan: Dürr-i meknun, 47. 41 TDVĐA, s.v. “Azâ’im” (S. Uludağ); Kâtib Çelebi, Keşf-el-zunun, Ş. Yaltkaya – K. R. Bilge eds,

2 vols (n.l. [Istanbul] 1943), II: 1137-1138; O. Ş. Gökyay, Kâtip Çelebi’den seçmeler (Istanbul 1968), 227-228; Dols, The Madman in Medieval Islamic Society, 272-273; cf. also M. Asatrian, “Ibn Khaldun on Magic and the Occult”, Iran and the Caucasus 7-1/2 (2003), 73-123 on the similar (but much more elaborate) analysis by Ibn Khaldun. This distinction of magic brings to mind Edward W. Lane’s observation that “[t]he more intelligent of the Muslims distinguish two kinds of magic, which they term “Er-Roohánee”… and “Es-Seemiya”. The former is spiritual magic, which is believed to effect its wonders by the agency of angels and genii, and by the mysterious virtues of certain names of God and other supernatural means; the latter is natural and deceptive magic, and its chief agents the less credulous Muslims believe to be certain perfumes and drugs…”: E. W. Lane, An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, Written in Egypt During the Years 1833-1835 (London 1896; repr. 1986), 272.

42 Kâtib Çelebi, Keşf-el-zunun, II: 980-982; Gökyay, Kâtip Çelebi’den seçmeler, 233-234. 43 See Lory, « Soufisme et sciences occultes »; Gardiner, “Forbidden Knowledge?”, esp. 129ff.

This is particularly true for astrology and fortune-telling, which were respected and widespread occupations in Ottoman culture: see e.g. Đ. H. Ertaylan, Falnâme (Istanbul 1951); Đ. H. Aksoyak

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Ebussuud Efendi had kept a more ambiguous attitude44). This can explain why we do not see any systematic witch-hunting in Ottoman history, although there are some such cases. For one thing, accusations for sorcery would easily be used to strengthen a persecution, as in the case of the famous Ester Kira Hatun,45 while some magicians or soothsayers would occasionally be executed as disturbers of peace: these cases, however, were political persecutions on the basis of “reason of state” rather than hunting witchcraft as such, i.e. as contact with the supernatural.46 One case in which

(ed.), Kefeli Hüseyin: Râznâme (Süleymaniye, Hekimoğlu Ali Paşa No. 539) (Harvard 2004); G. T. Koç, “An Ottoman Astrologer at Work: Sadullah el-Ankarâvi and the Everyday Practice of Đlm-i Nücûm”, in F. Georgeon – F. Hitzel (eds), Les Ottomans et le temps (Leiden 2012), 39-59; M. And, Turkish Miniature Painting. The Ottoman Period (Istanbul 1987), 126, 140. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there were soothsayers and occultists that played an imminent role in palace politics, such as Remmal (the geomancer) Haydar, who came from Iran to Suleyman the Magnificent’s court, or the more well-known Süca Efendi (d. 1582) and Cinci Hoca (d. 1648), consultants of Murad III and Ibrahim respectively. See C. Fleischer, “Shadows of Shadows: Prophecy in Politics in 1530s Istanbul”, International Journal of Turkish Studies 13/1-2 (2007), 51-62; Idem, Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: The Historian Mustafa Âlî (1541-1600) (Princeton 1986), 72-73; Idem, “Ancient Wisdom and New Sciences: Prophecies at the Ottoman Court in the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries”, in M. Farhad – S. Bağcı (eds), Falnama: The Book of Omens (Washington 2009), 231-244; C. Kafadar, Asiye Hatun: Rüya mektupları (Istanbul 1994), esp. 33-39 (now repr. in Idem, Kim var imiş biz burada yoğ iken. Dört Osmanlı: Yeniçeri, Tüccar, Derviş ve Hatun [Istanbul 2009], 123-191, at 144-149); EI2, s.v. “Husayn Efendi, known as Djindji Khodja” (C. Orhonlu). A thorough study of Ottoman sources on all these cases would be very useful for exploring Ottoman attitudes toward magic and the occult.

44 He condemns various sorts of divination, especially when practiced by ulema, but does not deem necessary to punish those who run to a geomancer (remmâl): Düzdağ, Ebussuud Efendi Fetvaları, 199 (nos 985-988). It might not be a coincidence that a geomancer, Haydar, was a close companion of the Sultan Suleyman’s (see above, previous fn.).

45 She is described as a “filthy sorceress… with devilish actions” (sâhire-pelîd… şeytân ef’âli mukarrer) by Topçular Kâtibi Abdülkâdir Efendi: Yılmazer (ed.), Topçular Kâtibi Tarihi, 272-273. Cf. also ibid., 1081, for a description of “heretical dervishes… wizards, slaves of wicked deeds” (zındık dervişler... sâhirler, ef’âl-ı habîs kulları). The infamous Cinci Hoca’s involvement with magic (efsûn) is also described with some contempt (but not much emphasis) by M. Đpşirli (ed.), Târih-i Na’imâ (Ankara 2007), III: 973-974.

46 See e.g. M. Đpşirli (ed.), Selânikî Mustafa Efendi: Tarih-i Selânikî (971-1003/1563-1595) (Ankara 1999), 45 on the execution of a geomancer (remmâl) following Suleyman the Magnificent’s campaign, just before his death (cf. Ertaylan, Falnâme, 28-29; N. Vatin, « Comment on garde un secret. Une note confidentielle du grand-vizir Sokollu Mehmed Paşa en septembre 1566 », in E. Kermeli – O. Özel (eds), The Ottoman Empire: Myths, Realities and ‘Black Holes’. Contributions in Honour of Colin Imber (Istanbul 2006), 239-255 at 249); Đpşirli (ed.), Târih-i Na’imâ, II: 879 (in 1638 a pasha is accused of “smoking and making magic” [duhân içer ve sihir eder] with the help of talismans [vefk]; cf. ibid., III: 981); A. Özcan (ed.), Defterdar Sarı Mehmed Paşa: Zübde-i Vekayiât. Tahlil ve metin (1066-1116/1656-1704) (Ankara 1995), 503-504 (execution of an astrologer involved in an Edirne small-scale coup-d’état in 1694). A 1571 order against a person who pretended to summon the jinn in order to find hidden treasures may have no political connotations, but on the other hand the accused is


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sorcery is an object of imminent and general persecution can be found in a fetva by Abdurrahim Efendi, who served as şeyhülislam for a short but influential term in 1715-1716:47

If it is evident according to the Sharia that Zeyd is a magician and a habitual offender (sahir olub sa’i bi’l-fesâd olduğu), is it legitimate to execute Zeyd?

Answer: It is legitimate.

However, it is to be noted that even then, the mere accusation of sorcery seems inadequate for a condemnation, as it has to be strengthened by the all-inclusive term “habitual offender”. Another fetva of the same period approves the execution of a magician (and all the more so, by siyaset, or administrative rather than religious authority), but only because in order to perform his magic he committed blasphemy upon the Holy Book:

Zeyd the magician (sahir), maliciously (ihaneten) puts the papers where the Quranic verses are written under the millstone and if it is certain by recourse to the Sharia that he is accustomed to grinding the grand verses under the millstone saying that “I wrenched one’s head to this direction and I turned another’s heart to that direction” and if he is apprehended before repentance, is it legitimate to execute Zeyd by siyaset?

Answer: It is legitimate.

Nonetheless, elsewhere the same şeyhülislam denies a woman’s request to abstain from sexual intercourse with her husband because the latter admitted that he believed in magic (sahrın vuku’u vardır inanırım dise).48 At any rate, there is undoubtedly no evidence of massive and systematic persecution of magic and sorcerers by the Ottoman authorities.

also said to have taken advantage of virgin girls for this purpose: A. Refik (Altınay), On altıncı asırda Rafızîlik ve Bektaşilik (Istanbul 1932), 30-31. Al-Nasafî’s (b. 1068) Akâ’id al-Nasafiyya, a textbook taught in the Ottoman medreses well till the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, stated that “admitting as true what the soothsayers (kâhin) predict on the future events is an act of infidelity”: M. S. Yazıcıoğlu, Le Kalâm et son rôle dans la société turco-ottomane aux XVe et XVIe siècles (Ankara 1990), 324.

47 E. E. Tuşalp, “Treating Outlaws and Registering Miscreants in Early Modern Ottoman Society: A Study on the Legal Diagnosis of Deviance in Şeyhülislam Fatwas”, unpublished M.A. thesis, Sabancı University, 2005, 43. On the term sa’i bi’l-fesâd see U. Heyd, Studies in Old Ottoman Criminal Law, ed. V. L. Ménage (Oxford 1973), 195-198.

48 Tuşalp, “Treating Outlaws and Registering Miscreants”, 71-72. Both fetvas belong to Behçetü’l-fetava, a collection of fetvas by Yenişehirli Abdullah Efendi, who served as şeyhülislam from 1718 to 1730. In such fetvas we can find some cases that bring to mind Carlo Ginsburg’s Menocchio: see ibid., 69ff. On siyaset punishment see Heyd, Old Ottoman Criminal Law, 192-195.

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If we are to accept Robert Muchembled’s view, the early modern European witch-hunt phenomenon was connected to a double crisis: firstly, a crisis of the medieval state and of the unity of Christendom, and secondly, a crisis of the rural world, which had to succumb to state authorities, giving up all its beliefs or “superstitions” and a whole system of private vengeance and internal checks and balances (this breaking-up of the closed village community is also mentioned by Peter Brown as a factor that had led much earlier, from the eleventh or twelfth century onwards, to a new understanding of the supernatural, now restrained in the individual rather than expressing the collective values of the community).49 In contrast, the Ottomans never experienced any major breach of their religious order (with the one and important exception of the early sixteenth-century Safavid influence to the Alevi populations of the Empire),50 nor did the rural world in the

49 R. Muchembled, “Satanic Myths and Cultural Reality”, in Ankarloo – Henningsen (eds), Early Modern European Witchcraft, 139-160; P. Brown, “Society and the Supernatural: A Medieval Change”, Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 104/2 (Spring 1975), 133-151.

50 As a matter of fact, and as Leslie Peirce noted in the H-TURK discussion mentioned in the beginning of this paper, heretics and especially the Alevi Kızılbaş figured as objects of systematic persecution, the way witches functioned in the West; in the peak of this anti-Shi’a wave, Selim I sent orders to all the judges of Anatolia just before marching against Şah Đsma’il (1514), ordering that all Kızılbaş from seven to seventy years old were registered (ol gürûh-ı mekrûhdan idüği sâbit olan eşkıyânın esâmileri deftere kayd olunub); purportedly, up to 40,000 men were either slain or imprisoned (kimi maktûl kimi mahbus olmuşidi). See Hoca Sa’deddin, Tac el-tevârih (Konstantiniye 1862), vol. II, 245-246; Solakzade, Solakzâde Tarihi (Istanbul 1879/80), 360-361; on the Kızılbaş, see e.g. I. Mélikoff, « Le problème Kızılbaş », Turcica 6 (1975), 49-67. However, it is unclear if the phrase “those who were proven of belonging to the abominable group” refers to the members of the Kızılbaş tribe, the followers of Şah Đsmail, or heretic Alevis in general; moreover, the number of 40,000 may be highly exaggerated and at any rate these persecutions have lasted much less than the European witch-hunt: see the analysis by F. Emecen, Zamanın Đskenderi, şarkın fatihi: Yavuz Sultan Selim (Istanbul 2010), 95-100, who points out that no contemporary source records the massacre (cf. A. Uğur, The Reign of Sultan Selîm I in the Light of the Selîm-nâme Literature (Berlin 1985), 227ff). Nevertheless, a general wave of anti-heretic activities did begin in the early sixteenth century, addressed against heterodox dervishes such as the Kalenderîs: Refik, On altıncı asırda Rafızîlik; A. Y. Ocak, Osmanlı Đmparatorluğunda marjinal sûfîlik: Kalenderîler (XIV-XVII. yüzyıllar) (Ankara 1992), 125ff.; Idem, “Kalenderi Dervishes and Ottoman Administration from the Fourteenth to the Sixteenth Centuries”, in G. M. Smith – C. W. Ernst (eds), Manifestations of Sainthood in Islam (Istanbul 1993), 239-255; Idem, Osmanlı toplumunda zındıklar ve mülhidler (15.-17. yüzyıllar) (Istanbul 1998). There are relevant documents that ressemble strongly the trial processes of the early modern Inquisition; see e.g. Refik, On altıncı asırda Rafızîlik, 29-30 (where a woman denounces her husband); A. Tietze, “A Document on the Persecution of Sectarians in Early Seventeenth-Century Istanbul”, in A. Popovic – G. Veinstein (eds), Bektachiyya. Études sur l’ordre mystique des Bektachis et les groupes relevant de Hadji Bektach (Istanbul 1995), 165-170 (and one has to note the strikingly objective and truth-loving account by Evliya: R. Dankoff, “An Unpublished Account of mum söndürmek in the Seyâhatnâme of Evliya Chelebi”, in ibid., 69-73). The political connotations of these


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Balkans or Anatolia ever have to give up its system of values and internal moral equilibrium in favor of central state interventions. Ruth Martin shows how early modern Venice sought to eliminate witchcraft rather than witches, thus avoiding systematic persecutions like the witch-hunting that prevailed in other areas that period. She argues that the main reasons for these were firstly, the emphasis of the local Inquisition (which functioned in an entirely bureaucratic way that left no space for individual initiatives of mass hysteria) on the witches’ repentance, rather than punishment; secondly, the fact that the emphasis on heresy left maleficium, or maleficent magic (in contrast to magic healing, divination, etc.) out of the Inquisitors’ jurisdiction: in Martin’s words, “the link between maleficium and heresy was simply never made in Venice”.51 In the Ottoman case, the absence of any systematic witch-hunting could also be attributed to the religious character of the authority that had jurisdiction over sorcery, i.e. the şeyhülislam or the local müftis’ offices in the first place; all the more since no heresy was permanently linked to witchcraft. On the other hand, in contrast to the Venetian Inquisition, Ottoman authorities seem to have accepted or at least tolerated witchcraft in general, but kept a vigilant eye over sorcerers and witches and punished them whenever they were suspected either of heresy/blasphemy or for political incitation.

This view is concomitant with the absence of Devil as an actual evil-doer in Islamic theology: indeed, contrary to what the medieval and early modern Christianity tended to maintain,52 the Devil’s role in Islam is mainly that of the tempter, of a bad influence for humans but not (as Leslie Peirce noted in the 2002 discussion) an active assistant of tempted wizards and witches.53 Although black magic (sihr) is connected with demoniacal forces in the Quran and condemned both in the Quran and in several hadiths, in the course of the following centuries it was linked first to the jinn and then (as also seen in the above-mentioned analysis by Kâtib Çelebi) to the “awareness of the causal mechanism which rules nature and [p]enetrating the affinities which bind mankind and the cosmos closely together”;54 in our examples, we saw some references to “wicked spirits”, but not to devilish ones. An exception may be a reference to Persian sorcery (sihir) used to enfeeble

persecutions are much more evident in comparison with the European witch-hunting. 51 R. Martin, Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice, 1550-1650 (Oxford 1989), esp. 253ff. 52 Early Christian writers associated magic with demons (which they associated to the Devil,

contrary to the pagan notion of neutral spirits), while in the late Middle Ages onwards (culminating with the witch-hunting of the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries) the Devil enters as a protagonist in necromancy and witchcraft cases, although it may be the case that his presence was overplayed by religious propaganda; see Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, 36ff., 151ff., 194ff.

53 See EI2, s.v. “Iblîs” (A. J. Wensinck-[L. Gradet]) and “Shaytân”.2 (D. Gimaret); TDVĐA, s.v. “Şeytan” (Đ. Çelebi). A different direction that does not touch directly the subject of this paper is followed by Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, 193-199.

54 EI2, s.v. “Sihr” (T. Fahd).

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Ottoman defense of Baghdad in 1625/26, where we read of “satanic acts” (a’mâl-i şeytâniyye); the fact that Persians were considered heretics may have contributed in this aspect.55 In sharp contrast, the Malleus Maleficarum, the famous late-fifteenth century German handbook for the prosecution of witches, put forth “the Devil, a witch, and the permission of Almighty God”, as “the three necessary concomitants of witchcraft”.56

The Dead and the Living: Theology and Tradition

Moving away from witchcraft, vampirism and ghosts present yet another problem for the religious and legal thought of both Christianity and Islam, since they challenge directly their conceptions of afterlife. Being essentially a Balkan phenomenon, as it may seem, vampirism was touched upon first by the Orthodox Church, beginning in the early fifteenth century. Already in 1438, the Patriarch of Constantinople had asserted that cases of corpses that do not decay and are suspected of wicked activity are creatures of the Devil, and instructed that people should not burn these corpses, as was the custom. These prohibitions went on throughout the Ottoman period, and in some cases the Church even threatened with excommunication those who were burning corpses for this reason.57 In the version given by an ecclesiastical ruling (nomokanon) and copied by Leo Allatius/Allatios or Leone Allacci (1586-1669), a Greek Catholic who first described the βρυκόλακας (the Greek equivalent of a vampire), it is the devil that possesses a corpse “wearing it like a cloth” and prevents it from decaying, in order to lure the credulous people into burning it and thus commit a great sin; it seems that the Church first tried to refute the corporeal existence of the creature (since it would deny the revenant any possibility of resurrection at the Last Judgment) and to deny any responsibility of the dead for such phenomena, then found a solution nearer to the popular beliefs, i.e. that these were the bodies of people excommunicated by the Church.58 Although the

55 Đpşirli ed., Târih-i Na’imâ, II: 596. The “satanic acts” are attributed to Bahâeddin Âmilî, who is presented as a Kızılbaş follower, for whom Persians had great esteem. Na’ima’s source, Kâtib Çelebi, lacks these details, mentioning only the charms used against the Ottoman army: Kâtib Çelebi, Fezleke, 2 vols, (Đstanbul 1869-1870), II: 86-87.

56 This is the title of the first part of the book. See M. Summers (ed.), Malleus Maleficarum (New York 1928; repr. 1970), 1.

57 See P. Michailaris, Αφορισµός. Η προσαρµογή µιας ποινής στις αναγκαιότητες της Τουρκοκρατίας (Athens 1997), 290-293.

58 See the detailed analysis and all the relevant literature in Hartnup, ‘On the Beliefs of the Greeks’, 173ff. (and 2 fn. 6 on how scholars dealt with this reference). Unfortunately, as far as I know Allatius’ book (De Graecorum hodie quorundam opinationibus) has not been translated; the relevant passages are in Leo Allatius, De templis graecorum recentioribus – De narthece ecclesiae veteris – De Graecorum hodie quorundam opinationibus (Colonia Agrippina [Köln (Amsterdam?)] 1645), 142ff. R. P. H. Greenfield notes that “the common later concept of vampires and revenants scarcely appears in [late Byzantine] sources at all” (Greenfield, Late Byzantine Demonology, 168 fn. 518).


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resurrection of the bodies is undoubtedly upheld by Islam as well, it does not seem that such thoughts ever entered the mind of Ebussuud and his successors.59

On the other hand, the reference to wicked “souls” in the first two Cinani stories60 (but also in Ebussuud’s first fetva) leaves open the possibility that such phenomena are caused by the spirits of the dead. However, it is more probable that what the author had in mind was evil spirits, or jinn, rather than human souls; or at least that he formulated his phrasing very carefully in order to leave this ambiguity. (In the same vein, most early Christian authors refuted the Biblical reference to the “witch of Endor” fetching prophet Samuel’s ghost, maintaining that what appeared like the dead prophet was merely a demon).61 And indeed the terms “soul” and “spirit”, or nefs and ruh, have produced considerable confusion as to whether they are discernible and which one remains with the body in the time of death:62 thus, it remains open to speculation whether Ebussuud’s or Cinani’s “wicked spirits” (nüfûs-ı şerîre or ervâh-ı habîse: note that plural forms of both nefs and ruh are used) are jinn or souls of the dead. In the first case, as we saw above, their presence is totally acceptable by the official Islamic theology; in the second, it is more than dubious, since communication between the living and the dead is mostly accepted to be done through dreams. Indeed, dreams are licitly conceived as bridges of communication between this world and the hereafter, and examples abound both in educated Ottoman circles and in local folklore;63 Ottoman fortune-telling stories

59 See J. I. Smith – Y. Yazbeck Haddad, The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection (Oxford 2002), 57, 73. At any rate, Hızır Bey (1407-1459), one of the most prominent theologians of the early Ottoman period, argues that the fate of the limbs of a corpse plays no role at all for the resurrection of the body (Yazıcıoğlu, Le Kalâm et son rôle, 290).

60 Osman Ünlü, however, understands the phrase bir kâlibün rûhı yâhud cin girüp as Cinani considering the evil presence a jinn, rather than a soul (bunun ruh değil cin olduğunu söyler): Ünlü (ed.), Bedâyiü’l-âsâr, I:91.

61 Summers, The History of Witchcraft, 176-181; Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, 33, 152; The Catholic Encyclopaedia (New York, 1907-1914), s.v. “Necromancy” (Ch. Dubray); Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 589; on the Muslim perspective, cf. Ch. M. Moreman, Beyond the Threshold: Afterlife Beliefs and Experiences in World Religions (Lanham, Maryland 2010), 88-89. The Biblical reference is in I Samuel 28:3-25. Keith Thomas argued that the Catholic Church was prone to admit the existence of ghosts, as it was teaching “that such apparitions were the souls of those trapped in Purgatory, unable to rest until they had expiated their sins”, while on the contrary the Reformation rejected vehemently this view as it did for the existence of Purgatory (Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 587ff); the “witch of Endor” presented the additional problem of a human being summoning a ghost. Some Byzantine sources suggested that demons might be souls of the dead, a belief rejected by standard orthodoxy (Greenfield, Late Byzantine Demonology, 168).

62 See Smith – Haddad, Death and Resurrection, 17-21 and cf. 36. 63 See e.g. Kafadar, Asiye Hatun: Rüya mektupları, 26-39 (repr. in Idem, Kim var imiş, 137-149);

A. Niyazioğlu, “Ottoman Sufi Sheiks Between This World and the Hereafter: A Study of Nev’izâde ‘Atâ’î’s (1583-1635) Biographical Dictionary”, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 2003, 195ff, 205ff, 224ff; see also A. Georgieva, “Dreams as Messages from the Other World: Insights into Two Balkan Local Cultures”, in G. Valtchinova (ed.), Religion and

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contain cases of necromancy (in the literal sense, i.e. divination by contact with the spirits of the dead), in which one visits a saint’s or a great poet’s grave and finds a solution to his problem, usually through a dream.64 However, this was always a dubious practice, and the seventeenth-century Kadızadeli movement denied vehemently that asking any spiritual assistance or intercession from the dead could be permissible.65 Thus, it is not surprising that a fetva of the early eighteenth century orders the punishment of someone who claimed to contact the dead in the cemeteries by way of magic, by making their relatives prostrating themselves toward the grave.66

If Zeyd goes to a grave and says to some people, “Come and I will bring you news from the grave; prostrate yourselves humbly a hundred times toward the grave”, and makes several men prostrate toward this grave, what should happen to him?

Answer: He must be punished by as many strokes as the kadi judges (ta’zir) and prohibited of doing so.

At any rate, there is a certain vagueness in the theological views the Ottomans inherited about the fate of the dead. A passage from al-Ghazali (1058-1111) indicates that some dead people’s spirits “wander around the realm below the earthly (or lowest) heaven”; on the other hand, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawzîya (d. 1350) admits that the question of the locality of the spirits of the dead before resurrection is debatable, and concludes that they are placed in various places of Heaven and Hell, while al-Suyuti (d. 1505) argues that punishable souls are “too busy with their punishments to be doing anything else”.67 This vagueness continued well into Ottoman culture.68 As Edhem Eldem notes (and in contrast with the distressed dead of the first Cinani story), “one of the vaguest and most ambiguous concepts in Ottoman funerary

Boundaries. Studies from the Balkans, Eastern Europe and Turkey (Istanbul 2010), 187-192 for modern observations.

64 Aksoyak (ed.), Kefeli Hüseyin: Râznâme, 52-53, 194; Niyazioğlu, “Ottoman Sufi Sheiks”, 205ff; cf. Fahd, La divination arabe, 174ff. Through the denial of the possibility of actual revival of dead people’s spirits, in the Middle Ages the term “necromancy” came to denote magic through invocation of demons (Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, 152-153).

65 See e.g. S. Çavuşoğlu, “The Kâdîzâdeli Movement: An Attempt of Şerî’at-Minded Reform in the Ottoman Empire”, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University 1990, 302-307; Niyazioğlu, “Ottoman Sufi Sheiks”, 211-214; cf. Kâtib Çelebi, Mîzânü’l-hak fi ihtiyâri’l-âhak (Konstantiniyye 1306/1888), 76-81.

66 Tuşalp, “Treating Outlaws and Registering Miscreants”, 72. This fetva belongs to Menteşizade Abdurrahim Efendi, who was a şeyhülislam in 1715-1716.

67 See the detailed description of the course between death and final resurrection according to authorities such as al-Ghazali or Abu Layth al-Samarkandi in Smith – Haddad, Death and Resurrection, 31-61 and especially 50ff. on intercourse between the living and the dead (p. 52 for al-Ghazali’s passage; 54 on al-Suyuti; 56-59 on Ibn Qayyim).

68 Cf. Yazıcıoğlu, Le Kalâm et son rôle, 170-172, 315.


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culture seems to have been the interval between death and the ultimate resurrection… Particularly in funerary epitaphs […] most wishes and prayers for the deceased are concerned with paradise rather than with the intermediary phase of life in the grave”.69

On the other hand, a body does not necessarily need to be dead in order for its soul to come out: Evliya Çelebi conveys a charming story about the soul (nefs) of Sultan Bayezid II coming out of his mouth in the form of a weasel, in order to taste a soup in the time of fasting, a story that brings to mind some descriptions of the Benandante wizards of Friuli. Purportedly, when the Sultan ordered the killing of his greedy soul, the şeyhülislam stated that it should be buried like a full human being, and “that is why Bayezid is said to have been buried twice”.70 In another, more islamicized version, a Sufi might experience insilâh, i.e. the stripping of his soul from his body to reach “the incorporeal realm of the divine universe”.71 Of course, such beliefs have clear shamanistic connotations and can be traced back either to Central Asian religions or to the Manichaean contrast between matter and spirit, an analysis that is out of place in this paper.72

At any rate, thus, the existence of ghosts does not seem acceptable in the Ottoman Islam, and it seems that this is reflected in the relevant vocabulary as well. Indeed, the word hortlak which today means “ghost” is a neologism; only in the beginnings of the nineteenth century we find the verb hortlamak with the meaning of “coming out of the grave”. Even toward the end of the century, Sir James Redhouse gives this time a very careful definition: “A corpse supposed to snort or groan in its grave from supernatural torture; a kind of vampire or ghost”.73 An Ottoman source describing folk beliefs of the late nineteenth century notes that ghosts were named hortlak or vampir, and that they were mostly appearing in Edirne (where people

69 E. Eldem, Death in Istanbul. Death and its Rituals in Ottoman-Islamic Culture (Istanbul 2005), 46.

70 Gökyay ed., Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnamesi, vol. 1, 140. Evliya adds a similar story on Bayezid (Abu Yazid) Bistamî, the famous ninth-century Sufi; contrary to the Sultan, who had his soul killed and then experienced all kinds of defeats and miseries, Bistamî let it back in. On the soul coming out of the living body in the form of a mouse in the Benandante confessions, see Ginzburg, Les batailles nocturnes, 39; on the more general folklore motive throughout Europe see Idem, Ecstasies, 138-139.

71 Niyazioğlu, “Ottoman Sufi Sheiks”, 215-224. A passage on such an experience, where a sheikh “informed his disciples that when he does not move himself for three days, they should not think that he is dead, but know that he is in a state of insilâh” (ibid., 216 fn. 339) is strikingly similar to various descriptions of shamanistic origin recorded all over Eurasia in Ginsburg, Ecstasies, 139, 170 and passim.

72 Cf. H. Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth. From Mazdean Iran to Shî’ite Iran (Princeton 1977).

73 The word is attested in Vâsıf Osman Bey’s poetry (d. 1824), and found its way to the dictionaries after the mid-nineteenth century (neither Kieffer and Bianchi, nor Zenker record it). See Tietze, Türkiye türkçesi lugatı, v. II (Wien 2009), 326, s.v. “hortla-“; http://www.nisanyansozluk.com/?k=hortlak; Redhouse, A Turkish and English Lexicon, 872.

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called them hortlak) and Manastır (Bitola), where, the author notes, they were called vampir.74

Conclusion: Conceptions of the Supernatural

If we may reach a conclusion from all this scattered evidence, it could perhaps focus in the place of the supernatural element in the Ottoman understanding of the world and the ways the exponents of scientific knowledge, be it rational or traditional, confronted this element.75 Now, describing the notions and categories of the “marvelous” in the Ottoman culture would surpass both the scope of this paper and the capacities of its author; only a few short notes can be made as an initiative for further discussion.

To begin with, as far as I can tell there is no word for the “supernatural” in classical Ottoman, and one could argue that even the very notion is absent, since the notion of “nature” is very near to that of “God”, and (as the latter is omnipotent) there is no extraordinary event that cannot be potentially true. As Annemarie Schimmel notes, in Islamic theology “[t]he general term for anything extraordinary is khâriq ul-‘âda, ‘what tears the custom’ (of God); i.e., when God wants to disrupt the chain of cause and result to which we are accustomed”.76 (And here we must note again that in this paper there was no mention of the “saintly” marvelous or supernatural, which of course abounds in Ottoman literature and hagiology and could be the subject of an article –indeed, of a book—at its own right.)77 Following

74 Abdülaziz Bey, Osmanlı âdet, merasim ve tabirleri. Đnsanlar, inanışlar, eğlence, dil, eds K. Arısan – D. Arısan Günay (Istanbul 1995), II, 374. See also ibid., 420 (hortlak in a glossary of popular expressions) and 441 (hortlasın as a kind of curse).

75 On this distinction (rational, al-‘ulûm al-‘akliyya, vs. traditional or “transmitted” sciences, al-‘ulûm al-nakliyya) see B. Tezcan, “Some Thoughts on the Politics of Early Modern Ottoman Science”, in D. Quataert – B. Tezcan (eds), Beyond Dominant Paradigms in Ottoman and Middle Eastern/North African Studies. A Tribute to Rifa’at Abou-El-Haj (Istanbul 2010), 135-156, at 138. If we had more material on Ottoman magic and sorcery (a project some other scholar might hopefully undertake), we might compare these attitudes and their (hypothetical) development to the interesting pattern of development Tezcan proposes in this article.

76 Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, 206 and cf. EI2, s.v. “Karâma” (L. Gardet). 77 See e.g. E. G. Ambros – J. Schmidt, ‘A Cossack Adopted by the Forty Saints: An Original

Ottoman Story in the Leiden University Library’, in Kermeli –Özel (eds), Myths, Realities and ‘Black Holes’, 297-324, or any of the published menakıbnâmes of Sufi saints: for instance, H. Đnalcık, “Dervish and Sultan: An Analysis of the Otman Baba Vilâyetnâmesi”, in Smith – Ernst (eds), Manifestations of Sainthood, 209-223; A. Y. Ocak, Türk halk inançlarında ve edebiyatında evliyâ menkabeleri (Ankara 1983); Idem, Kütlür tarihi kaynağı olarak menakıbnameler. Metodolojik bir yaklaşım (Ankara 1992); Niyazioğlu, “Ottoman Sufi Sheiks”, 95-101, 215ff.; a relatively late example is Enfî Hasan Hulûs Halvetî, “Tezkiretü’l-Müteahhirîn”. XVI.-XVIII. Asırlarda Đstanbul Velîleri ve Delileri, eds M. Tatcı – M. Yıldız (Istanbul 2007). Sufi authors had a special interest in narrating their own (or their teachers’) visionary experiences and miracles, as they thus established their authority as “the preeminent masters of the time”: D. Terzioğlu, “Man in the Image of God in the Image of the Times: Sufi


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their Arabian and Persian predecessors, the Ottomans would rather speak of the “marvelous”, which as a mental category played a major role in the medieval imagination, both in East and West. As defined by al-Kazvini (1203-1283), author of a very well-known collection of mirabilia, there are “ordinary marvels” (‘acâ’ib) and “extraordinary” ones (garâ’ib); the second category includes both the miracles of Prophets and saints and the works of demons, as well as magic, divination, and other man-driven occult phenomena.78 In both senses, it is evident that the marvelous is present in the Ottoman folklore and literature; what has to be incorporated somehow by “scientific” authors (I take the term to mean authors for whom, in this context, abnormal events can be tolerated only within the confines of religion) is that part of the marvelous which concerns the Hereafter (while they tend to be more skeptical as far as it concerns mythological geography or zoology, for instance). This happens because such “marvelous” events can be reconciled with the official theological/cosmological frame; moreover, and contrary to mythical geographies and other “ordinary marvels” according to al-Kazvini’s categorization, such events are not affected by scientific progress, especially since the existence of the jinn is fully accepted. (On the other hand, and especially with a view to the state response, the manipulation of cases related to the supernatural might be used in order to enhance the power of religious authorities.) It is to be noted, for instance, that mythical places described as such in aca’ib-style cosmographies were by the late sixteenth century a set for obviously fictional folktale-like novels,79 while the reality or magic or divination would still be perfectly accepted by such a “scientific” author as Kâtip Çelebi.

It would be interesting to further elaborate these thoughts under the light of the Weberian idea on the “disenchantment of the world” brought about in Western Europe by the Reformation and the intellectual and political developments of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. There is a lively discussion, which cannot be

Self-Narratives and the Diary of Niyâzî-i Mısrî (1618-94)”, Studia Islamica 94 (2002), 139-165 at 147.

78 Fahd, « Le merveilleux dans la faune, la flore et les minéraux », 118 (but cf. also the relevant discussion in ibid., 138ff); Rodinson, « La place du merveilleux et de l’étrange », 186.

79 See e.g. Çakır – Koncu (eds), XVI. yüzyıldan bir aşk hikâyesi, 28-29, where the two protagonists come from the cities of Câbelikâ and Câbelisâ, on which see e.g. Sakaoğlu (ed.), Yazıcıoğlu Ahmed Bîcan: Dürr-i meknun, 67. In the same way Kâtib Çelebi refutes the existence of Kaf Dağı, affirmed by earlier cosmographies (Gökyay, Kâtip Çelebi’den seçmeler, 264; while Yazıcıoğlu denies only that it could be reached by men: Sakaoğlu (ed.), Yazıcıoğlu Ahmed Bîcan: Dürr-i meknun, 51). Both the Mountain Kaf and Câbelikâ appear in the Persian and Ottoman (but not Arabic) miracnâme (descriptions of the Prophet’s ascension) tradition: see M. Akar, Türk edebiyatında manzum mi’râc-nâmeler (Ankara 1987); Ch. Gruber – F. Colby (eds), The Prophet’s Ascension. Cross-Cultural Encounters with the Islamic Mir’âj Tales (Bloomington 2010). I wish to thank Dr. Phokion Kotzageorgis who pointed out this tradition to me.

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taken up here, on the character or even the existence of this process;80 and very little research has been done so far on the Ottoman counterpart.81 Recently Derin Terzioğlu suggested82 that although

the temporal and the mundane entered Sufi personal narratives, as the Sufis became progressively more integrated into the social, political and economic structures of “this world”… this new tendency was not accompanied by a “disenchantment of the world” such as has been posited for early modern Europe. In fact, the blurred boundaries between the earth and the heavens may even have made the everyday life of mystics… more enchanted than ever.

A comparison of this suggestion with the views of non-Sufi authors or of the Ottoman authorities could be very fruitful, but needs much more material than what is collected here.

80 On this discussion see e.g. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic; R. Scribner, “The Reformation, Popular Magic, and the ‘Disenchantment of the World’”, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23/3 (1993), 475-494; M. Gauchet, The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion (Princeton 1997); R. Jenkins, “Disenchantment, Enchantment and Re-Enchantment: Max Weber at the Millenium”, Max Weber Studies 1 (2000), 11-32; A. Walsham, “The Reformation and ‘The Disenchantment of the World’ Reassessed”, The Historical Journal 51/2 (2008), 497-528.

81 See e.g. N. Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (London 1964; repr. 1998), esp. 26-30. Such a research could also encompass fetvas referring to “atheistic” attitudes, literary personalities neglecting prayers (bî-namaz), heretic thinkers characterized as “atheists”, and so forth.

82 Terzioğlu, “Man in the Image of God in the Image of the Times”, 165.

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