Cultivating Love towards the Prophet in the Early Modern Ottoman Period: Arguments and Practice

Abstract

This article looks into one aspect of devotional piety of the early modern Ottoman period. It focuses on a manual on tashwīq, or encouragement of longing and love towards the Prophet, by a 17th century Ottoman Bosnian scholar Ḥasan Imām-zāde. Through the analysis of the components of the manual, some of the mechanisms of producing a Prophet-centred devotional habitus are fleshed out, such as argumentation of love and practices enhancing it such as the taṣliya (evoking blessings on the Prophet). In that context, love emerges as a result of a conscious effort which involves active human effort. In this way, the article points to the necessity of a more nuanced research of the devotional in Islam through the focus on the mechanisms of the cultivation of emotions. Based on the premise that emotions are not fixed and unchangeable throughout time, the textual practice of tashwīq will be set into its early modern Ottoman context, and in particular at the crossroads of Balkan-Arab mobilities of the 17th century.