Ghosts Vampires and Sorcerers-Libre

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 falc (clairvoyant) and byc (magic maker!), but
the literature about them is extremely rare. And they are not accepted
necessarily as cad (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.
Acaib'l-mahlukat kind of literature deals with cad stories, and there are
depictions of cads in miniatures [] but I have yet to see any account of
persecution of a byc or a cad. Also a history of the cin and being
possessed by the cin (the verbs cin tutmak, cinlenmek, cinnilere kar mak 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, Boa 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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M. SARIYANNIS
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. to be found in Ottoman literature, especially in
Evliya elebis Seyahatnme, 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 eyhlislam 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
OF OTTOMAN GHOSTS, VAMPIRES AND SORCERERS
possession is possible but it keeps breaking out all the same.

periods, it is rampant.
197
In some
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 Sdosteuropa. Studien zur Genese, Bedeutung und
Funktion. Rumnien und der Balkanraum (Berlin 2001); M. Khbach, Ein Fall von
Vampirismus bei den Osmanen, Balkan Studies 20 (1979), 83-90; M. Ursinus, Osmanische
Lokalbehrden der frhen Tanzimat im Kampf gegen Vampire? Amtsrechnungen (masrf
defterleri) aus Makedonien im Lichte der Aufzeichnungen Marko Cepenkovs (1829-1920),
Wiener Zeitschrift fr 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 Stokers 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,
Europes 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, 13001500 (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 sicles (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. Praud eds, Le sabbat des
sorciers en Europe (XVe-XVIIIe sicles). 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 ltude 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 Structuralists Approach, Studia Islamica 49 (1979), 5-38; T. Fahd, La
198
M. SARIYANNIS
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 lislam
(Leiden 1987); R. Lemay, LIslam historique et les sciences occultes, Bulletin dEtudes
Orientales 44 (1992), 147-159; M. Dols, Majnn: The Madman in Medieval Islamic Society, D.
E. Immisch ed. (Oxford 1992), 261ff; A. Regourd P. Lory eds., Sciences occultes et Islam,
Bulletin dtudes Orientales, Damas 43 (1993); P. Lory, Soufisme et sciences occultes , in
A. Popovi G. Veinstein eds, Les voies dAllah. Les ordres mystiques dans lislam des
origines aujourdhui (Paris 1996), 185-194; R. Gyselen (ed.), Charmes et sortilges. 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-Bn, Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 12 (2012), 81-143. I was
completing this article when I ran into Z. Aycibin, Osmanl devletinde cadlar zerine bir
deerlendirme, OTAM: Ankara niversitesi Osmanl Tarihi Ara trma 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. Karma (L. Gardet) and Mudjiza (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
199
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. Ebussuuds answer is simple:
If this is true, it is caused by Gods sacred will. There is a saying that the wicked
souls (nfs- erre) attach themselves (taallk 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 (rtekomak 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 eyhlislams thought.
This subtle distinction seems to have faded away some one and a half century
after Ebussuud. Markus Khbach 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/worldeurope-18334106 (accessed September 2012).
8 M. E. Duzda, eyhlislam Ebussuud Efendi Fetvalar (Istanbul 1983), 197-198 (nos 980-982).
9 For a similar case, that might show that not all fetvas in Dzdas 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 Dzda, see Dzda, Ebussuud Efendi Fetvalar 24-26.
200
M. SARIYANNIS
century (in 1701, as it seems).10 An anonymous chronicler recorded a report by the

kadi of Edirne, as follows:
The inhabitants of the Mara village, district of Edirne, declared before the
religious court that some signs of evil spirits (ervh- habse alimi) were
observed upon the grave of the previously deceased Bykl 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
unbelievers 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 (vahme) 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 suba of Edirne:
The inhabitants of the Hac Sarraf quarter in Edirne declared before the court
that in the Muslim cemetery signs of witchcraft (cd alimi) 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 womans 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 defi
mtd 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 Khbach, Ein Fall von Vampirismus (on the dating of the events, see in particular p. 87). The
Ottoman text is now published as A. zcan (ed.), Anonim osmanl tarihi (1099-1116 / 16881704) (Ankara 2000), 148-149.
201
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 (Manastr), dated from the same period (1836, 1837, 1839), on
payments for experts on witchcraft (cdclar, cd ustdlar) 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 elebi (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 evval 1076, which corresponds to April 24 or 25). Oburs, he
explains, are the wizards and sorcerers of these tribes (oburlar, yani sehhr ve
sehereleri... obur demek sehhr czlara derlermi ); 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, Takvm-i Vekyi, issue no. 68 (21
Cemaziylevvel 1249). See Aycibin, Osmanl devletinde cadlar, 59. lber Ortayl
(mparatorluun en uzun yzyl, 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 Lokalbehrden der frhen Tanzimat.
13 Y. Dal, S. A. Kahraman, R. Dankoff eds, Evliya elebi Seyahatnamesi, vol. 7 (Istanbul
2003), 279-280; cf. J.-L. Bacqu-Grammont, Evliy elebi Seyahatnmesinde by, in N.
Tezcan (ed.), ann srad yazar Evliy elebi (Istanbul 2009), 87-90 at 90.
14 Ginzburgs 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 Praud 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, Ginsburgs 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, Europes Inner Demons; Kieckhefer, European Witch
202
M. SARIYANNIS
There is no plague in these lands. Whenever a man gets a little sick, or even
if he doesnt, 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 oburluundan hals olur), although the signs of their oburship (obur
almeti) 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 tantc yani cd sihirbz 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 oburs] 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 Gods 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 Evliyas descriptions,
purportedly conveyed by his father, featuring the army of the plague (tan
askeri), consisting of both benevolent and wicked souls (ervh- tayyibe, ervh-
habse) 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 suspects 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-Sos blood When I was buried next to my obur grandfathers and my
Trials; and cf. Peter Burkes 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 Evliyas 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.
Dal, S. A. Kahraman eds, Evliya elebi Seyahatnamesi, vol. 4 (Istanbul 2001), 341-342.
203
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 (ok ya amak in 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 (Rmda). 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 Obura, 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 (cdya ve
sihirbz avrete ve mezrda 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 (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. Dal eds, Evliya elebi Seyahatnamesi, vol. 6 (Istanbul 2002), 91.
17 A. Tietze, Slavische Lehnwrter in der trkischen Volksprache, Oriens 10/1 (1957), 1-47, at
31-32 (no. 226); cf. R. Dankoff, Evliy elebi Seyahatnmesi okuma szl (Istanbul 2008),
183. On the Circassian expulsion to the Ottoman Empire see EI2, s.v. erkes.iii (H. nalck);
slam Ansiklopedisi, s.v. erkesler (M. Bala).
18 German Vampir (and its other West European forms) come from a Slavic word of various
forms (Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian (vampir), Czech upr, Ukrainian (upyr),
Russian (upyr'), all derived from Old East Slavic (upir'). It has been proposed
(first by Franz Miklosich) that there is ultimately a Turkic etymology (Tatar ubyr,
mythological creature; Chuvash vpr, bad ghost of a witch, appearing in different forms).
See M. Vasmer, Russisches Etymologisches Wrterbuch, 4 vols (Heidelberg 1950-1958), s.v.
; 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 Dmonen 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), 5763.
19 See E. Pcs, Le sabbat et les mythologies indo-europennes , in Jacques-Chaquin Praud
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
204
M. SARIYANNIS
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 (cdlar) 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 qrqendlz 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 Cinn (d. 1595) composed at the Sultans request Bedyil-sr, a
collection of prose stories, in 1590. This highly interesting work, published very
recently by Osman nl,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 (acib-i
umr ve garib-i nezdk dr); 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
21
22
23
24
25
26
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.
E.g. O. . Gkyay ed., Evliya elebi Seyahatnamesi, vol. 1 (Istanbul 1996), 22, 255.
Ibid., 25.
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).
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
lspouser ? et autres essais (Paris 1971), 226ff.
O. nl (ed.), Cinn: Bedyil-sr, 2 vols (Harvard 2009).
On this genre cf. T. Fahd, Le merveilleux dans la faune, la flore et les minraux , in
Association pour lAvancement des tudes Islamiques Centre de littrature et de linguistique
arabes du CNRS, Ltrange et le merveilleux dans lIslam mdival. Actes du colloque tenu au
205
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. Poes famous story The Facts in the Case of M.
Valdemar: it relates that in the castle of Dra (Durrs, Durazzo), by Gods order
souls of dead people entered the body of moribund persons (mukaddemen fevt
olanlardan birinn rh Allahun emriyle cesedine duhl edp) and spoke with the
latter ones voice, asking their relatives for prayers:
For instance he says: Hey tyrants, why dont you inspect my case? I am Soand-so, son of So-and-so; they torment me greatly in the Hereafter (hiretde).
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 dont
you read any prayers for my soul (cnum), why dont 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 (rh yahud cin) enters a corporeal form and speaks, with Gods
permission. Such stories are well-known truth.
In the second story, a spirit (cin) enters a concubine (first described as epileptic,
masra) in Egypt; an expert (muzzim)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 girls
body after agreeing upon Salomons seal not to possess her again. The end of the
story is quite interesting, as it shows that Ebussuuds 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 (ervh- habse) cling to dead bodies (beden-i meyyit), so that these
Collge de France Paris, en mars 1974 (Paris 1978), 117-165 ; M. Rodinson, La place du
merveilleux et de ltrange dans la conscience du monde musulman mdival , in ibid., 167227; and (on its European counterparts) J. Le Goff, Limaginaire mdival (Paris 1985) ; Idem,
Prface in Gervais de Tilbury, Le livre des merveilles (Paris 1992), ix-xvi.
27 nl (ed.), Bedyil-sr, II: 334-337.
28 The word is not found in Ottoman dictionaries; it is derived from azim, incantations, spells.
See Trk Diyanet Vakf slam Ansiklopedisi (henceforth TDVA), s.v. Azim (S. Uluda).
Usually it means exorcist, especially in relation with magic healing of madness (Dols, The
Madman in Medieval Islamic Society, 276-278).
206
M. SARIYANNIS
become enchanted (cz olmak) and make strange movements. It is even

lawful ( er) 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 eyhlislam 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 Yrk tribe near
Sandukl, whose right thigh was possessed by a jinn.29 The spirit spoke in a whistlelike voice, without the girl opening her mouth, and gave advice and oracles, with the
girls brother as intermediary. The narrator of the story himself, an assistant to the
court, took the spirits 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 elebi; 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 Ginzburgs analysis on the
motive of lameness as connected to the world of the dead: Ginzburg, Ecstasies, 226ff.
30 See e.g. the rest of Cinanis work, or its more or less contemporary M. akr H. Koncu eds,
XVI. yzyldan bir a k hikyesi: Medhnin r-i dilr b-mihr-i mnri (Istanbul 2010). Edith
Glin 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 elebi (Leiden 2004), 202-203. The
story (which Dankoff gives in translation) can also be found in S. A. Kahraman, Y. Dal eds,
Evliya elebi 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 winters night, but this
year she turned into a hen. Interesting, what Dankoff translates as witch is our well-known
kara koncolos (ol kar ba ka soydur. K geceleri ylda bir kerre eyle kara koncolos olurdu.
Amm bu yl 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. Pcs, Le sabbat
et les mythologies indo-europennes , 30.
207
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 (mderris),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 Abdlkadir Efendi (d. ca. 1644) describes a
cave in ehrizor (modern Northern Iraq) as a lair of sorcery (czlar yurdu),
where people were trapped and killed with magic.34 As for the vampire stories
recorded in the eyhlislams or the kadis 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 populations 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 cd, of Persian origin, means witchcraft, sorcery and is
already attested in Ottoman Turkish in a mid-fifteenth-century collection of stories,
the famous Ferec bade - idde, as well as in Yazcolu Ahmed Bcans
contemporary Drr-i meknn (where it denotes the Pharaohs 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 nl (ed.), Bedyil-sr, I: 6-8.
34 Z. Ylmazer (ed.), Topular Ktibi Abdlkdir (Kadr) Efendi Tarihi (Metin ve tahll) (Ankara
2003), 914.
35 F. Steingass, A Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary (London 1892), 349; A. Tietze,
Tarihi ve etimolojik Trkiye trkesi lugat / Sprachgeschichtliches und etymologisches
Wrterbuch des Trkei-Trkischen, v. I (Istanbul Wien 2002), 412, s.v. cadu/cazu/caz; G.
Hazai A. Tietze (eds), Ferec bad e - idde, Freud nach Leid (Ein frhosmanisches
Geschichtenbuch), 2 vols (Berlin 2006), 1: 216; N. Sakaolu (ed.), Yazcolu Ahmed Bcan:
Drr-i meknun (Sakl inciler) (Istanbul 1999), 107 (cf. also 74 on the sorcerers of Babylon
used by Nimrud). Sevan Ni anyans online etymologic dictionary locates the first appearance of
the word in A k Pa as Garib-nme (1330): http://www.nisanyansozluk.com/?k=cad%C4%B1.
Meninskis 1680 dictionary contains only the sorcery, witchcraft meaning (Franois de
Mesgnien [Meninski], Thesaurus linguarum orientalium, vols I-VI, Vienna 1680, I :1543),
208
M. SARIYANNIS
examples by Cinani. As far as I can see, the meaning vampire (spectre) / Vampyr
(Gespenst) is first recorded in Julius Zenkers dictionary (1866), while James
Redhouse (1890) offers the somehow westernized (with its reference to bloodsucking) definition a dead person superstitiously supposed to return to earth, in
order to suck the blood of persons asleep, a vampire (and cdluk etmek: to act as
a vampire; cdlanmak: to become a wizard, witch, hag, or vampire, etc.).36
Although in Evliyas use it may denote an actual vampire, it still means witchcraft
in general (for instance, Evliya couples it with sihirbz, sorcerer). In our
examples, it is only to be found with this meaning after the beginnings of the
eighteenth century, in the anonymous chroniclers 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 Ebussuuds 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-franais lusage des
agents diplomatiques et consulaires, des commerants, des navigateurs et autres voyageurs
dans le Levant, 2 vols (Paris 1835-1837), I : 352, give an emphasis to the female element:
cd, cd: Sorcier et surtout sorcire Gidi cd: Vilaine sorcire. Indeed, in literary works
such as Medhs r-i dilr b-mihr-i mnr, a love romance with folk-tale elements composed
in the late sixteenth century, plenty of wicked cd appear, all female: see akr Koncu eds,
XVI. yzyldan bir a k hikyesi, 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 sexblind. On the use of the word in medieval Persian literature, cf. M. Gaillard, Foi hroique
contre magie dmoniaque: une lutte exemplaire , in Gyselen (ed.), Charmes et sortilges, 109163; 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-inliterature-and-folklore-in-the-islamic-period (accessed on October 2012); Omidsalar notes that
the words jdu (cdu) 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 Cinanis work than those described, but they are supposed to be
much nearer to fiction than the last ones. See the analysis by nl (ed.), Bedyil-sr, I: 8791.
38 See nl (ed.), Bedyil-sr, I: 88; I did not have access to: G. Scognamillo A. Arslan,
Dou ve Bat kaynaklarna gre cinler (Istanbul 1993); A. O. Ate , Kuran ve hadislere gre
cinler by (Istanbul 1995); or S. Ate , nsan ve insanst: Ruh melek cin insan
(Istanbul 1979).
209
from both humans and angels, and according to some scholars the Devil (blis) is but
one of them.39 As a matter of fact, they were also a plausible means of explaining
acaib or mirabilia, such as those described by Cinani: in Yazcolu Ahmed
Bcans 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. ] 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 (azim) was accepted
by paragons of Ottoman science such as Ta kprzde or Ktib elebi; the latter
makes a distinction between permissible (mubh) 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 Gods help, since it is Him who has ordained that the jinn can be
subdued to man.41 Elsewhere, Ktib elebi 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 Ktib elebi
constituted an integral part of Ottoman scholarship of this period43 (although
39 EI2, s.v. Djinn.II (D. B. MacDonald [H. Mass]); TDVA, s.v. Cin (A. S. Klavuz); Dols,
The Madman in Medieval Islamic Society, 212ff; D. De Smet, Anges, diables et dmons en
gnose islamique. Vers lislamisation dune dmonologie noplatonicienne , R. Gyselen (ed.),
Dmons et merveilles dOrient (Bures-sur-Yvette 2001 [Res Orientales XIII]), 61-70. On Iblis
being a jinn see EI2, s.v. Ibls (A. J. Wensinck-[L. Gradet]).
40 Sakaolu (ed.), Yazcolu Ahmed Bcan: Drr-i meknun, 47.
41 TDVA, s.v. Azim (S. Uluda); Ktib elebi, Ke f-el-zunun, . Yaltkaya K. R. Bilge eds,
2 vols (n.l. [Istanbul] 1943), II: 1137-1138; O. . Gkyay, Ktip elebiden semeler (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. Lanes observation that [t]he more intelligent of the Muslims distinguish two
kinds of magic, which they term Er-Roohnee 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 Ktib elebi, Ke f-el-zunun, II: 980-982; Gkyay, Ktip elebiden semeler, 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. . H. Ertaylan, Falnme (Istanbul 1951); . H. Aksoyak
210
M. SARIYANNIS
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 Hseyin: Rznme (Sleymaniye, Hekimolu Ali Pa a No. 539) (Harvard 2004); G.
T. Ko, An Ottoman Astrologer at Work: Sadullah el-Ankarvi and the Everyday Practice of
lm-i Ncm, in F. Georgeon F. Hitzel (eds), Les Ottomans et le temps (Leiden 2012), 3959; 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 Magnificents court, or the more well-known Sca 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 l (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. Bac (eds), Falnama: The Book of Omens
(Washington 2009), 231-244; C. Kafadar, Asiye Hatun: Rya mektuplar (Istanbul 1994), esp.
33-39 (now repr. in Idem, Kim var imi biz burada yo iken. Drt Osmanl: Yenieri, Tccar,
Dervi 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 (remml): Dzda, Ebussuud Efendi
Fetvalar, 199 (nos 985-988). It might not be a coincidence that a geomancer, Haydar, was a
close companion of the Sultan Suleymans (see above, previous fn.).
45 She is described as a filthy sorceress with devilish actions (shire-peld eytn efli
mukarrer) by Topular Ktibi Abdlkdir Efendi: Ylmazer (ed.), Topular Ktibi Tarihi, 272273. Cf. also ibid., 1081, for a description of heretical dervishes wizards, slaves of wicked
deeds (zndk dervi ler... shirler, efl- habs kullar). The infamous Cinci Hocas
involvement with magic (efsn) is also described with some contempt (but not much emphasis)
by M. p irli (ed.), Trih-i Naim (Ankara 2007), III: 973-974.
46 See e.g. M. p irli (ed.), Selnik Mustafa Efendi: Tarih-i Selnik (971-1003/1563-1595)
(Ankara 1999), 45 on the execution of a geomancer (remml) following Suleyman the
Magnificents campaign, just before his death (cf. Ertaylan, Falnme, 28-29; N. Vatin,
Comment on garde un secret. Une note confidentielle du grand-vizir Sokollu Mehmed Pa a en
septembre 1566 , in E. Kermeli O. zel (eds), The Ottoman Empire: Myths, Realities and
Black Holes. Contributions in Honour of Colin Imber (Istanbul 2006), 239-255 at 249); p irli
(ed.), Trih-i Naim, II: 879 (in 1638 a pasha is accused of smoking and making magic
[duhn ier ve sihir eder] with the help of talismans [vefk]; cf. ibid., III: 981); A. zcan (ed.),
Defterdar Sar Mehmed Pa a: Zbde-i Vekayit. Tahlil ve metin (1066-1116/1656-1704)
(Ankara 1995), 503-504 (execution of an astrologer involved in an Edirne small-scale coupdtat 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
211
sorcery is an object of imminent and general persecution can be found in a fetva by

Abdurrahim Efendi, who served as eyhlislam 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 sai bil-fesd olduu), 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 ones head to this direction and I turned
anothers 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 eyhlislam denies a womans request to abstain
from sexual intercourse with her husband because the latter admitted that he
believed in magic (sahrn vukuu vardr inanrm 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 (Altnay), On altnc
asrda Rafzlik ve Bekta ilik (Istanbul 1932), 30-31. Al-Nasafs (b. 1068) Akid al-Nasafiyya,
a textbook taught in the Ottoman medreses well till the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
stated that admitting as true what the soothsayers (khin) predict on the future events is an act
of infidelity: M. S. Yazcolu, Le Kalm et son rle dans la socit turco-ottomane aux XVe
et XVIe sicles (Ankara 1990), 324.
47 E. E. Tu alp, Treating Outlaws and Registering Miscreants in Early Modern Ottoman Society:
A Study on the Legal Diagnosis of Deviance in eyhlislam Fatwas, unpublished M.A. thesis,
Sabanc University, 2005, 43. On the term sai bil-fesd see U. Heyd, Studies in Old Ottoman
Criminal Law, ed. V. L. Mnage (Oxford 1973), 195-198.
48 Tu alp, Treating Outlaws and Registering Miscreants, 71-72. Both fetvas belong to
Behetl-fetava, a collection of fetvas by Yeni ehirli Abdullah Efendi, who served as
eyhlislam from 1718 to 1730. In such fetvas we can find some cases that bring to mind Carlo
Ginsburgs Menocchio: see ibid., 69ff. On siyaset punishment see Heyd, Old Ottoman Criminal
Law, 192-195.
212
M. SARIYANNIS
If we are to accept Robert Muchembleds 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 Kzlba figured as objects of
systematic persecution, the way witches functioned in the West; in the peak of this anti-Shia
wave, Selim I sent orders to all the judges of Anatolia just before marching against ah smail
(1514), ordering that all Kzlba from seven to seventy years old were registered (ol grh-
mekrhdan idi sbit olan e kynn esmileri deftere kayd olunub); purportedly, up to 40,000
men were either slain or imprisoned (kimi maktl kimi mahbus olmu idi). See Hoca Sadeddin,
Tac el-tevrih (Konstantiniye 1862), vol. II, 245-246; Solakzade, Solakzde Tarihi (Istanbul
1879/80), 360-361; on the Kzlba , see e.g. I. Mlikoff, Le problme Kzlba , 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 Kzlba tribe, the followers of ah smail, 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, Zamann skenderi, arkn fatihi: Yavuz Sultan Selim (Istanbul 2010),
95-100, who points out that no contemporary source records the massacre (cf. A. Uur, The
Reign of Sultan Selm I in the Light of the Selm-nme 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 Kalenders: Refik, On altnc asrda Rafzlik;
A. Y. Ocak, Osmanl mparatorluunda marjinal sflik: Kalenderler (XIV-XVII. yzyllar)
(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, Osmanl toplumunda zndklar ve mlhidler
(15.-17. yzyllar) (Istanbul 1998). There are relevant documents that ressemble strongly the
trial processes of the early modern Inquisition; see e.g. Refik, On altnc asrda Rafzlik, 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. tudes sur lordre 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 sndrmek in the
Seyhatnme of Evliya Chelebi, in ibid., 69-73). The political connotations of these
213
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 Martins 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 eyhlislam or the local mftis
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 Devils 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
Ktib elebi) 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. Ibls (A. J. Wensinck-[L. Gradet]) and Shaytn.2 (D. Gimaret); TDVA, s.v.
eytan (. elebi). 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).
214
M. SARIYANNIS
Ottoman defense of Baghdad in 1625/26, where we read of satanic acts (aml-i

eytniyye); 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
(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 p irli ed., Trih-i Naim, II: 596. The satanic acts are attributed to Baheddin mil, who is
presented as a Kzlba follower, for whom Persians had great esteem. Naimas source, Ktib
elebi, lacks these details, mentioning only the charms used against the Ottoman army: Ktib
elebi, Fezleke, 2 vols, (stanbul 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, .
(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 [Kln
(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).
215
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 Ebussuuds 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 Samuels 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 Ebussuuds or Cinanis wicked spirits
(nfs- erre or ervh- habse: 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, Hzr 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 (Yazcolu, Le Kalm et son rle, 290).
60 Osman nl, however, understands the phrase bir klibn rh yhud cin girp as Cinani
considering the evil presence a jinn, rather than a soul (bunun ruh deil cin olduunu syler):
nl (ed.), Bedyil-sr, 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: Rya mektuplar, 26-39 (repr. in Idem, Kim var imi , 137-149);
A. Niyaziolu, Ottoman Sufi Sheiks Between This World and the Hereafter: A Study of
Nevizde Ats (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
216
M. SARIYANNIS
contain cases of necromancy (in the literal sense, i.e. divination by contact with the
spirits of the dead), in which one visits a saints or a great poets grave and finds a
solution to his problem, usually through a dream.64 However, this was always a
dubious practice, and the seventeenth-century Kadzadeli 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 (tazir)
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 peoples spirits wander around the realm below the earthly
(or lowest) heaven; on the other hand, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawzya (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 alSuyuti (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
64
65
66
67
68
Boundaries. Studies from the Balkans, Eastern Europe and Turkey (Istanbul 2010), 187-192 for
modern observations.
Aksoyak (ed.), Kefeli Hseyin: Rznme, 52-53, 194; Niyaziolu, Ottoman Sufi Sheiks,
205ff; cf. Fahd, La divination arabe, 174ff. Through the denial of the possibility of actual
revival of dead peoples spirits, in the Middle Ages the term necromancy came to denote
magic through invocation of demons (Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, 152-153).
See e.g. S. avu olu, The Kdzdeli Movement: An Attempt of erat-Minded Reform in
the Ottoman Empire, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University 1990, 302-307;
Niyaziolu, Ottoman Sufi Sheiks, 211-214; cf. Ktib elebi, Mznl-hak fi ihtiyril-hak
(Konstantiniyye 1306/1888), 76-81.
Tu alp, Treating Outlaws and Registering Miscreants, 72. This fetva belongs to Mente izade
Abdurrahim Efendi, who was a eyhlislam in 1715-1716.
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-Ghazalis passage; 54 on al-Suyuti; 56-59 on Ibn Qayyim).
Cf. Yazcolu, Le Kalm et son rle, 170-172, 315.
217
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 elebi 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 eyhlislam 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 insilh, 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 Gkyay ed., Evliya elebi Seyahatnamesi, vol. 1, 140. Evliya adds a similar story on Bayezid
(Abu Yazid) Bistam, the famous ninth-century Sufi; contrary to the Sultan, who had his soul
killed and then experienced all kinds of defeats and miseries, Bistam 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 Niyaziolu, 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 insilh (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 Shite Iran
(Princeton 1977).
73 The word is attested in Vsf Osman Beys 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, Trkiye trkesi lugat, v. II (Wien 2009), 326, s.v. hortla-;
http://www.nisanyansozluk.com/?k=hortlak; Redhouse, A Turkish and English Lexicon, 872.
218
M. SARIYANNIS
called them hortlak) and Manastr (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 khriq ul-da, 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 bookat its own right.)77 Following
74 Abdlaziz Bey, Osmanl det, merasim ve tabirleri. nsanlar, inan lar, elence, dil, eds K.
Arsan D. Arsan Gnay (Istanbul 1995), II, 374. See also ibid., 420 (hortlak in a glossary of
popular expressions) and 441 (hortlasn as a kind of curse).
75 On this distinction (rational, al-ulm al-akliyya, vs. traditional or transmitted sciences, alulm 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 Rifaat Abou-El-Haj (Istanbul 2010), 135156, 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. Karma (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 zel (eds), Myths, Realities and
Black Holes, 297-324, or any of the published menakbnmes of Sufi saints: for instance, H.
nalck, Dervish and Sultan: An Analysis of the Otman Baba Vilyetnmesi, in Smith Ernst
(eds), Manifestations of Sainthood, 209-223; A. Y. Ocak, Trk halk inanlarnda ve
edebiyatnda evliy menkabeleri (Ankara 1983); Idem, Ktlr tarihi kayna olarak
menakbnameler. Metodolojik bir yakla m (Ankara 1992); Niyaziolu, Ottoman Sufi Sheiks,
95-101, 215ff.; a relatively late example is Enf Hasan Huls Halvet, TezkiretlMteahhirn. XVI.-XVIII. Asrlarda stanbul Velleri ve Delileri, eds M. Tatc M. Yldz
(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. Terziolu, Man in the Image of God in the Image of the Times: Sufi
219
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 (acib)
and extraordinary ones (garib); 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-Kazvinis 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 acaib-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 Ktip elebi.
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 Niyz-i Msr (1618-94), Studia Islamica 94 (2002), 139-165
at 147.
78 Fahd, Le merveilleux dans la faune, la flore et les minraux , 118 (but cf. also the relevant
discussion in ibid., 138ff); Rodinson, La place du merveilleux et de ltrange , 186.
79 See e.g. akr Koncu (eds), XVI. yzyldan bir a k hikyesi, 28-29, where the two
protagonists come from the cities of Cbelik and Cbelis, on which see e.g. Sakaolu (ed.),
Yazcolu Ahmed Bcan: Drr-i meknun, 67. In the same way Ktib elebi refutes the
existence of Kaf Da, affirmed by earlier cosmographies (Gkyay, Ktip elebiden semeler,
264; while Yazcolu denies only that it could be reached by men: Sakaolu (ed.), Yazcolu
Ahmed Bcan: Drr-i meknun, 51). Both the Mountain Kaf and Cbelik appear in the Persian
and Ottoman (but not Arabic) miracnme (descriptions of the Prophets ascension) tradition:
see M. Akar, Trk edebiyatnda manzum mirc-nmeler (Ankara 1987); Ch. Gruber F. Colby
(eds), The Prophets Ascension. Cross-Cultural Encounters with the Islamic Mirj Tales
(Bloomington 2010). I wish to thank Dr. Phokion Kotzageorgis who pointed out this tradition to
me.
220
M. SARIYANNIS
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
Terziolu 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 (b-namaz), heretic thinkers characterized as atheists, and so
forth.
82 Terziolu, Man in the Image of God in the Image of the Times, 165.

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OF OTTOMAN GHOSTS, VAMPIRES AND

SORCERERS: AN OLD DISCUSSION DISINTERRED

1 See http://www.h-net.org/logsearch/, with keyword Ottoman witchcraft (accessed October

OF OTTOMAN GHOSTS, VAMPIRES AND SORCERERS

possession is possible but it keeps breaking out all the same.

OF OTTOMAN GHOSTS, VAMPIRES AND SORCERERS

History (London 2007), 231-242.

century (in 1701, as it seems).10 An anonymous chronicler recorded a report by the

OF OTTOMAN GHOSTS, VAMPIRES AND SORCERERS

OF OTTOMAN GHOSTS, VAMPIRES AND SORCERERS

often mentioned by Evliya in Christian context;21 a slight nuance of the Circassian

OF OTTOMAN GHOSTS, VAMPIRES AND SORCERERS

become enchanted (cz olmak) and make strange movements. It is even

OF OTTOMAN GHOSTS, VAMPIRES AND SORCERERS

supernatural elements in Ottoman literature would be very useful, for instance in

OF OTTOMAN GHOSTS, VAMPIRES AND SORCERERS

OF OTTOMAN GHOSTS, VAMPIRES AND SORCERERS

sorcery is an object of imminent and general persecution can be found in a fetva by

If we are to accept Robert Muchembleds view, the early modern European

OF OTTOMAN GHOSTS, VAMPIRES AND SORCERERS

Ottoman defense of Baghdad in 1625/26, where we read of satanic acts (aml-i

OF OTTOMAN GHOSTS, VAMPIRES AND SORCERERS

OF OTTOMAN GHOSTS, VAMPIRES AND SORCERERS

OF OTTOMAN GHOSTS, VAMPIRES AND SORCERERS

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