Glimpsing the Divine Through the Mundane: Constructing an Ottoman Framework for the Sixteenth-Century Teshuvah and Fetvâ

Abstract

“Glimpsing the Divine Through the Mundane: Constructing an Ottoman Framework for the Sixteenth-Century Teshuvah and Fetvâ” situates sixteenth-century Hebrew-language responsa (Hebrew she’elot u’tshuvot, lit. “questions and answers”) and Ottoman Turkish fetâvâ (singular fetvâ) in a contextual environment of shared culture and overlapping societies in the Ottoman Empire. Although the genre of Jewish she’elot u’tshuvot has its own origins in the centuries prior to the establishment of the Ottoman Empire, it did not exist in a vacuum in the Ottoman world, irretrievably tied to its past iterations. The sphere of religious law in the Ottoman Empire enveloped a plethora of religions. “Glimpsing the Divine” examines the she’elot u’tshuvot of Rabbi Yosef ibn Lev (d. 1580), an authoritative figure who maintained contact with Jewish communities beyond his home communities of Salonika and Istanbul, in tandem with fetâvâ authored by one of the most renowned chief Islamic jurists of the sixteenth century, Ebûʾs-suʿûd (d. 1574). Consequently, I examine she’elot u’tshuvot and fetâvâ as similar genres of literature that reflect an Ottoman worldview, including conceptions of the performative humility; elevated language that mirrors a conception of the Divine; and the transcending of malleable spatial and hierarchical boundaries. Through close textual analyses of these two authors’ work, I argue for the formulation of a new academic subfield that analyzes Ottoman religious studies in a context beyond Islamic studies, contextualizing the evolution of multiple, distinct traditions developing together and exchanging ideas in a quintessentially early modern environment. In doing so, I advocate for the reconsidering of established narratives concerning the production of intellectual and religious texts in the early modern Ottoman period and within Jewish history.