Theoretical Gnosis and Doctrinal Sufism and Their Significance Today

Ottoman Turkey

Turning to the Turkish part of the Ottoman world, we find a continuous and strong tradition in the study of theoretical gnosis going back to al-Qūnawī himself and his circle in Konya. Foremost among these figures after the founding of this School are Dā’ūd Qaysarī (d. 751/1350) and Shams al-Dīn Fanārī (d. 834/1431). A student of Kāshānī, Qaysarī wrote a number of works on gnosis, including his commentary on the Tā’iyyah of Ibn al-Fārid, but chief among them is his commentary upon the Fusūs, which is one of the most thorough and remains popular to this day.25 He also wrote an introduction to this work called al-Muqaddimah which summarizes the whole cycle of gnostic doctrines in a masterly fashion and has been itself the subject of many commentaries including important glosses by Ayatollah Khomeini to which we shall turn shortly and a magisterial one by Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī (d. 1426/2005).26 As for Fanārī, besides being a chief qādī in the Ottoman Empire and a major authority on Islamic Law, he was the author of what many Turkish and Persian students of gnosis consider as the most advanced text of ‘irfān, namely the Misbāh al-uns.27 It is strange that today in Bursa where he is buried as elsewhere in Turkey, he is known primarily as a jurist and in Persia as a gnostic. In addition to these two major figures, one can mention Bālī Effendi (d. 960/1553), well known commentator of Ibn ‘Arabī, and many other Sufis who left behind notable works on theoretical gnosis up the 14th/20th century. In fact the influence of this School in the Ottoman world was very extensive including in such areas as Bosnia and is to be found in many different types of Turkish thinkers into the contemporary period. Among the most famous among them one can name Ahmed Avni Konuk (d. 1357/1938) who wrote a four volume commentary on the Fusūs ; his contemporary Ferid Ram (d. 1363/1944), who was at the same time a gnostic, philosopher and political figure and the author of several works on Ibn ‘Arabian gnosis; and Ismail Fenni Ertugrul (d. 1359/1940), a philosopher who used the teachings of Ibn ‘Arabī to refute the errors of modern Western philosophy, especially materialism. His writings contributed greatly to the revival of interest in metaphysics in 14th/20th century Turkey.28