Molla Arap, whose real name was Muhyiddin Mehmed b. Ömer, was a scholar of hadith and Qur'anic exegesis who preached in Mamluk and Ottoman lands in the late fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth century. To distinguish him from the shaykh al-Islam Alâeddin Arabî Efendi, who bore the same nickname, the sources call him "Arap Vâiz" (the Arab Preacher). His surviving works are Arabic treatises on hadith and on religious merits presented to Bayezid II and Selim I (Selim the Grim); one of them is a treatise on holy war written before the Chaldiran campaign. His link with Amasya is not direct: he was not born in Amasya, held no post there and is not known to have written any of his works there. What connects him to the history of Amasya is that the Ottoman army returning from Chaldiran spent the winter of 1514-1515 in Amasya, and that a letter he wrote to the Khalwatis found an echo in the Khalwati circle of Amasya. This page deals with his works and with this indirect link.

He was born in Antakya, probably around 868 (1464). He studied in Antakya, Hasankeyf, Diyarbekir and Tabriz, became known in Aleppo for his sermons and lessons, received a licence (icazet) from Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti in Cairo and attended the circle of the Mamluk sultan Qaitbay. In 903 (1497-98) he came to Ottoman lands, preached in Bursa and Istanbul and took part in the gatherings of Bayezid II. He urged Selim I to campaign against the Safavids and served as a preacher with the army on the Chaldiran campaign. In Rumelia he taught exegesis for some ten years at Skopje, took part with Süleyman the Magnificent in the Hungarian campaign of 1526, and died in Bursa on 4 Muharram 938 (18 August 1531). His life is told in detail in the biography Molla Arap.

Works

According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, Molla Arap has five works whose copies are in the Süleymaniye Library; four were presented to Bayezid II and one to Selim I. All are in Arabic and all are of the kind one would expect from a preacher's pen: selections of hadith, books of merits and a religious summons. To these are added works mentioned in the sources whose copies have not been identified, and a work wrongly attributed to him.

Tehzîbü'ş-Şemâil fî men hassa'llâhu bi-ekmeli'l-fezâil

This book was formed by abridging and rearranging al-Tirmidhi's al-Shamail al-nabawiyya, which describes the appearance, character and daily life of the Prophet. Its title means "the arrangement of the qualities of the one whom God endowed with the most perfect virtues". It is dedicated to Bayezid II. Copy: Süleymaniye Library, Lâleli no. 1547.

el-Makâsıd fî fezâili'l-mesâcid

This is a work in seven chapters on the merits of mosques, dedicated to Bayezid II. That it was presented to a sultan who counted the building of mosques foremost among good works suggests a harmony between the subject of the book and its dedication; this is our interpretation. Copy: Süleymaniye Library, Ayasofya no. 3447.

Erbaûne Hadîsen (First and Second Forty Hadiths)

Molla Arap has two treatises of forty hadiths. The first, dedicated to Bayezid II, gives forty hadiths on various subjects together with some related verses and stories. The second follows the first and refers to it in its introduction; it brings together forty-two concise hadiths that are easy to memorise, one of them repeated. Compiling forty hadiths is a genre, based on a promise attributed to the Prophet, that is very widespread in the Islamic world. Copy: Süleymaniye Library, Esad Efendi no. 431.

es-Sedâd fî fazli'l-cihâd

This is the work of Molla Arap most closely tied to historical events. According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, Molla Arap warned Selim I against the Qizilbash, urged him to campaign against Iran and wrote this work for that purpose. Its title means "the right path in the merit of holy war". The work can be linked to the preparations for the Chaldiran campaign of 1514; however, the sources do not give its date or place of writing. Molla Arap was with the sultan during the campaign and preached to the soldiers on holy war; when Tabriz was entered he continued his anti-Shiite sermons there. The treatise can be read as the written form of what he said from the pulpit. Copy: Süleymaniye Library, Ayasofya no. 1985.

Other Works Mentioned in the Sources

The sources mention a book of jurisprudence called al-Nihaya, covering the questions of the famous Hanafi book Durar wa ghurar, which Molla Arap wrote in Cairo and presented to Sultan Qaitbay; a work called Hidayat al-ibad ila sabil al-rashad; a Mawlid al-nabi; and numerous treatises on alchemy. The TDV article gives no information on their copies. It is also recorded that Molla Arap had a deep knowledge of alchemy but did not use it, and that he earned his living by trade.

Alongside these, a letter he sent to the Khalwatis should also be counted among his written works. Molla Arap, who spoke against the sema and the dance in his sermons in Istanbul, wrote a letter declaring dance and the devran during zikr forbidden and sent it to the members of the Khalwatiyya in Istanbul. The text of the letter has not survived; its content is known from the reply it received and from accounts in the biographical sources.

Wrongly Attributed Work

Brockelmann attributes to Molla Arap a work entitled Risala fi mas'alat al-jabr wa'l-qadar (Râgıb Paşa Library no. 1459). According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, this work belongs to the shaykh al-Islam Alâeddin Arabî and is a gloss on the "four premises" (mukaddimât-ı erbaa) concerning the question of good and evil in Sadr al-Sharia's al-Tawdih, which was debated in the reign of Mehmed II. The confusion of names between the two Molla Araps has thus reached as far as modern bibliography.

Amasya in His Works

We have found no passage in Molla Arap's works that mentions Amasya. The sources do not give the place where his known works were written either. His relationship with Amasya is established in two ways. The first is the Chaldiran campaign. Selim I came to Amasya on 24 November 1514 to spend the winter and stayed in the city until 19 April 1515. Since Molla Arap had been with the sultan from the start of the campaign, it is highly probable that he was with the army on the return and spent the winter in Amasya; but no source states this explicitly. Molla Arap's biography takes him, after his sermons in Tabriz, directly to Aleppo after the fall of the Mamluk state.

The second link is the reply to the letter he wrote to the Khalwatis. The Khalwati sheikh who answered the letter, Cemâleddin İshak Karamânî (Cemal Halife), most probably took his calligraphy lessons from Şeyh Hamdullah in Amasya, and one of his deputies, İmamzâde Hayreddin Hızır Efendi, continued his activity in Amasya. Amasya's historian Hüseyin Hüsameddin records the dispute in his biography of Karamânî:

Molla Arab, esnâ-yı Zikrullâhda raks ve deverânın harâm olduğuna dâ'ir yazdığı mektuba fâzılâne ve müskitâne cevâb verdi.

In English: He gave a learned and silencing answer to the letter Molla Arap had written on dance and the devran during the remembrance of God being forbidden. Hüsameddin's adjective "müskitâne" (silencing) also shows the verdict, on who won the dispute, of a historian looking from within the Khalwati tradition of Amasya. According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, Karamânî said in this reply that dance and the devran are lawful and permissible for those qualified for them. In the same dispute a treatise defending the devran was also attributed to Zenbilli Ali Efendi, who had served as mufti of Amasya; according to Ahmet İnanır this treatise is most probably not Zenbilli's. For details see Zenbilli Ali Efendi: Writer and Works.

Influence and Assessment in the Sources

Molla Arap's fame comes more from his pulpit than from his works. The sources speak of the depth of his knowledge of exegesis and hadith, his powerful memory and his knowing almost all the sound hadiths by heart. It is said that in his sermons he spoke what he held to be right without hesitation, warned the people against the Shia and the Ardabiliyya (Safaviyya) and fought against innovations; it is related that he too was cursed in the mosques of the Ardabiliyya. That in Aleppo a member of the retinue of Shah Ismail's envoy drew his sword to kill him during a sermon in the Great Mosque, causing a political crisis, shows how powerful his words were.

The information about him comes from both the Ottoman and the Arabic biographical traditions: alongside Taşköprizâde's al-Shaqaiq, Mecdî's translation of it and Atâî's continuation, the chronicle Durr al-habab of the Aleppan historian Radi al-Din Ibn al-Hanbali is the main source for his life. Ibn al-Hanbali defends him, stating that Badr al-Din al-Suyufi's charge of ignorance against him is not to be credited. The TDV article mentions no edition of his works; their known copies are in the Süleymaniye Library. His sons Muhyiddin Muhammad and Abdürraûf also served as judges and wrote scholarly works.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Online sources