Abstract
Mullā Shams al-Dīn al-Fanārī (d. 1431) was an Ottoman theologian, jurist, and Sufi, who became a prominent figure after the “Fetret Devri” (Ottoman Interregnum), a historic period in which the Ottoman Empire faced severe civil wars among the sons of Yildirim Beyazit (r. 1389–1403). He is widely accepted by historians as the first “sheikh al-Islam” (head of the juristic affairs) in the Ottoman Empire. Al-Fanārī is the author of several works in various Islamic disciplines, each of which became very influential in their fields. These influential works include Misbāh al-Uns, a work in theoretical Sufism which was written as a commentary on Miftāh al-Ġayb by Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī (d. 1274) and Fuṣūl al-Badāyiʿ, a work in the field of jurisprudence (usūl al-fiqh). Al-Fanārī’s engagement with the mystical school of Ibn Arabī, along with the traditional methodological disciplines, gave him the epithet of “the combiner of the two main domains” in Islamic sciences, i.e., the domains of classical religious sciences and mysticism. This authority of him continued in the scientific atmosphere of the Ottoman State with his successors who were his family descendants and were known as “Fanārīzāde”s, i.e., the sons of al-Fanārī.
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Kaya, V. (2019). Mullā Shams al-Dīn al-Fanārī. In: Lagerlund, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1151-5_581-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1151-5_581-1
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