Author's note: I thank Heath Lowry, Hasan Karataş, Amy Singer, Hana Taragan, Ayelet Zoran-Rosen, the anonymous reviewers, and the editors for their invaluable comments and suggestions. I dedicate this article to Leslie Peirce.

¹ Repp, R. C., The Müfti of Istanbul: A Study in the Development of the Ottoman Learned Hierarchy (London: Ithaca Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Abdurrahman Atçıl, “The Formation of the Ottoman Learned Class and Legal Scholarship (1300–1600)” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2010). Colin Imber's study investigates some of the doctrinal implications of the appointment of a chief imperial mufti. Imber, Colin, Ebu's-su'ud: The Islamic Legal Tradition (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997).Google Scholar

² Guy Burak, “The Abu Hanifah of His Time: Islamic Law, Jurisprudential Authority and Empire in the Ottoman Domains” (PhD diss., New York University, 2012).

³ The case study of al-Madrasa al-ʿUthmaniyya is also pertinent to the literature on women's charitable activity in the Ottoman and other Islamic societies. On this activity in the early modern Ottoman context, see Baer, Gabriel, “Women and Waqf: An Analysis of the Istanbul Tahrîr of 1546,” Asian and African Studies 17 (1983): 9–27Google Scholar; Meriwether, Margaret L., “Women and Waqf Revisited: The Case of Aleppo, 1770–1840,” in Women in the Ottoman Empire: Middle Eastern Women in the Early Modern Era, ed. Zilfi, Madeline C. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997), 128–52Google Scholar; Singer, Amy, Constructing Ottoman Beneficence: An Imperial Soup Kitchen in Jerusalem (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Thys-Senocak, Lucienne, Ottoman Women Builders: The Architectural Patronage of Hadice Turhan Sutlan (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006)Google Scholar; and Zarinebaf, Fariba, “Women, Patronage, and Charity in Ottoman Istanbul,” in Beyond the Exotic: Women's Histories in Islamic Societies, ed. el-Azhary Sonbol, Amira (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2006), 89–101.Google Scholar

⁴ Altunsu, Abdülkadir, Osmanlı Şeyhülislamları (Ankara: Ayyıldız Matbaası, 1972), 1–3.Google Scholar

⁵ ʿAbd al-Rahman ibn Muhammad al-ʿUlaymi, al-Uns al-Jalil bi-Tarikh al-Quds wa-l-Khalil (Najaf: al-Matbaʿa al-Haydariyya, 1968), 2:40. A late 16th-century court record indicates that the building had two assembly halls and more than twelve cells. Hamilton Burgoyne, Michael, Mamluk Jerusalem: An Architectural Study (London: Published on behalf of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem by the World of Islam Festival Trust, 1986), 70.Google Scholar

⁶ The main source for this transaction is al-ʿUlaymi's chronicle. It is interesting that al-ʿUlaymi does not identify Fenari as a senior scholar, let alone the first appointed chief mufti of the Ottoman state. Instead, he briefly states that “a man from Rum [central and western Anatolia] purchased [the madrasa] after [al-Nasir Faraj's] death. His name was Muhammad Shah al-Fanari al-Rumi.” The brevity of this account should be contrasted to the information in other sources from the late Mamluk period about Fenari, his visits to Cairo, and his position in the Ottoman domains and may be attributed to the ongoing war between the Mamluks and the Ottomans. But it is also possible that the Jerusalemite chronicler genuinely did not know how eminent Fenari was in the Ottoman realms. On Fenari in other Mamluk sources, see al-ʿAsqalani, Ahmad ibn ʿAli ibn Hajar, Inbaʾ al-Ghumr fi Anbaʾ al-ʿUmr (Cairo: al-Majlis al-Aʿla li-l-Shuʾun al-Islamiyya, 1972), 3:464–65Google Scholar; Taghribirdi, Abu al-Mahasin Yusuf ibn, al-Manhal al-Safi wa-l-Mustawfa baʿda al-Wafi (Cairo: Dar al-Kutub wa-l-Wathaʾiq al-Qawmiyya, 1984), 10:40–41.Google Scholar

⁷ Bilge, Mustafa, İlk Osmanlı Medreseleri (Istanbul: Edebiyat Fakültesi Basımevi, 1984), 239.Google Scholar

⁸ Al-ʿUlaymi, al-Uns, 2:234. On Muhammad Shah Fenari, see Taşköprüzade, Ahmad ibn Mustafa, al-Shaqaʾiq al-Nuʿmaniyya fi ʿUlamaʾ al-Dawla al-ʿUthmaniyya (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-ʿArabi, 1975), 228–29.Google Scholar

⁹ Al-ʿUlaymi, al-Uns, 2:241.

¹⁰ Ibid., 2:36.

¹¹ Burgoyne, Mamluk Jerusalem, 544–54; Van Berchem, Materiaux, 321–25.

¹² Burgoyne, Mamluk Jerusalem, 544; van Berchem, Max, Materiaux pour un Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicum (ii): Syrie du Sud, Jerusalem “ville,” Memoires, IFAO de Caire 43 (Cairo: IFAO, 1922), 322–23.Google Scholar See also Kamil Jamil al-ʿAsali, Maʿahid al-ʿIlm fi Bayt al-Maqdis (Amman: Jamʿiyat ʿUmmal al-Matabiʿ al-Taʿawuniyya, 1981), 176–81.

¹³ Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi, Ali Emiri Tasnifi I:9.

¹⁴ On Edebali, see Kamil Şahin, “Edebali,” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi (hereafter TDVİA).

¹⁵ HakkıUzunçarşılı, İsmail, Çandarlı Vezir Ailesi (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1998), 55Google Scholar; Münir Aktepe, “Çandarlı İbrahim Paşa,” TDVİA.

¹⁶ Barkan, Ömer Lûtfi and Meriçli, Enver, eds., Hüdavendigar Livası Tahrir Defterleri (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1988), 282–83.Google Scholar See also Kafadar, Cemal, Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1995), 187Google Scholar, n. 26.

¹⁷ Being a descendent of Edebali was still considered prestigious in the late 16th century. ʿAli Bey, a 16th-century shaykh, was also a member of the Edebali family. ʿAli Bey, it should be noted, girded Ahmed I's sword in the first recorded enthronement-related sword-girding ceremony in Ottoman history. Tezcan, Baki, The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 121.Google Scholar

¹⁸ For different meanings of the term “Rumi,” see C. E. Bosworth, “Rum,” Encyclopedia of Islam, Second Edition (hereafter EI2); Inaclik, Halil, “Rumi,” EI2; Salih Özbaran, Bir Osmanlı Kimliği: 14–17. Yüzyıllarda Rûm/Rûmi Aidiyet ve Imgeleri (Istanbul: Kitab, 2004)Google Scholar; Lellouch, Benjamin, Les Ottomans en Égypte: Historiens et conquerants au XVIe siècle (Louvain: Paris, 2006), 184–99Google Scholar; Kafadar, Cemal, “A Rome of One's Own: Reflections on Cultural Geography and Identity in the Lands of Rum,” Muqarnas 24 (2007): 7–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Winter, Michael, “Ottoman Qāḍīs in Damascus in the 16th–18th Centuries,” in Law, Custom, and Statute in the Muslim World: Studies in Honor of Aharon Layish, ed. Shaham, Ron (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2007), 87–109Google Scholar; and Krstić, Tijana, Contested Conversion to Islam: Narratives of Religious Change in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2011), 1–7, 51–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁹ His full name as it appears in the biographical literature is ʿImadüddin Mustafa b. İbrahim b. Inac el-Kirşehiri. Şahin, “Edebali,” 393.

²⁰ Burgoyne, Mamluk Jerusalem, 546. According to the family tree of the Çandarlı family reconstructed by İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, one of Mahmud's great-grandsons was also named Mahmud. It is possible that he was the guardian of the Anatolian endowment at some point in the 16th century. Uzunçarşılı, Çandarlı Vezir Ailesi, 112.

²¹ Bilge, İlk Osmanlı Medreseleri, 237.

²² Taşköprüzade, al-Shaqaʾiq al-Nuʿmaniyya, 60.

²³ Seven of these villages were around Gerede, two around Hayrabolu, and one near Iznik.

²⁴ Isfahan Shah Khatun received Kircahasan (in the environs of Bursa) as milk from her husband, Ibrahim Pasa. Uzunçarşılı, Çandarlı Vezir Ailesi, 55, n. 2.

²⁵ Atalar, Münir, Osmanlı Devletinde Surre-i Hümayun ve Surre Alayları (Ankara: Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı Yayınları, 1991), 10–13.Google Scholar See also ʿAşikpaşazade, , Aṣikpaṣaoǧlu Tarihi (Istanbul: Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı Kitapları, 1970), 196Google Scholar; and Neşri, , Kitab-i Cihan-nüma (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1949–57), 2:678.Google Scholar

²⁶ The earliest of these endowments is al-Khatuniyya madrasa (begun in 1354, completed in 1380). The builder of the madrasa was a certain Oghul Khatun from Baghdad. The construction of the madrasa was completed by another Isfahan Shah, the daughter of the amir Qazan Shah. It is possible, as Burgoyne suggested, that both builders were elite women in the Jalairid domains. Burgoyne, Mamluk Jerusalem, 343–55. The second endowment is al-Ribat al-Mardini (completed early in the 14th century). The founders of the hospice (ribat) are said to have been two freedwomen of the Artuqid ruler of Mardin, al-Salih b. Gazzi II (r. 1312–63). The ribat was intended to serve as a guesthouse for the pilgrims from Mardin to Jerusalem. Ibid., 412–14. Also around 1369, Safari Khatun, the wife of a merchant from Abivard (Khorasan), al-Khawaja ʿImad al-Din al-Bawardi, built another madrasa, which al-ʿUlaymi calls the Bawardiyya Madrasa. Ibid., 70; al-ʿUlaymi, al-Uns, 2:43–44. In addition to the madrasa, Safari Khatun erected a tomb for herself. The fourth endowment was another madrasa. Located at the northern border of the Haram between the Karimiyya madrasa and the minaret of Bab al-Absat, al-Madrasa al-Ghadiriyya (or al-Qadiriyya) was named after the amir Nasir al-Din Muhammad b. Ghars al-Din Khalil b. Zayn al-Din Qaraja Dhulghadir, a prince of the Turkmen dynasty of the Dhulghadirids (or Dhulqadirids), upon its completion in 1432, but the endowment had been initiated by his wife, Misr Khatun. Burgoyne, Mamluk Jerusalem, 526–33.

²⁷ Al-ʿUlaymi states that Isfahan Shah Khatun is buried in the madrasa, although other contemporary sources are silent on this question. If she is indeed buried in the madrasa's premises, she probably left the Ottoman lands for Jerusalem at some point between 1429 and 1437. The fact that she identifies herself in the endowment deed as the mother of Mahmud Çelebi, and not as İbrahim Paşa's wife, may indicate that she endowed the lands in Anatolia after her husband's death in 1429 and moved to Jerusalem thereafter.

²⁸ Al-ʿUlaymi, al-Uns, 2:228–29.

²⁹ Ibid., 2:233.

³⁰ On Hürrem Sultan and her soup kitchen, see Amy Singer, Constructing Ottoman Beneficence; and Peirce, Leslie P., The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 58–90.Google Scholar The only madrasa built by a member of the ruling elite was founded by Ahmad Paşa b. Ridwan Paşa b. Mustafa Paşa in 1604. Natsheh, Yusuf, “Catalogue of Buildings,” in Ottoman Jerusalem: A Living City, ed. Auld, Sylvia and Hillenbrand, Robert (London: Altajir World of Islam Trust, 2000), 2:851–57.Google Scholar

³¹ For a family tree of the Çandarlı family up to the early 20th century, see Uzunçarşılı, Çandarlı Vezir Ailesi, 112–14.

³² In 1575, the Hanafi mudarris of the Fanariyya reported in court on the repairs recently conducted in the madrasa. Burgoyne, Mamluk Jerusalem, 70. As to the ʿUthmaniyya madrasa, in a mid-17th-century entry in the sijill of Jerusalem, the Hanafi mufti of the city, Jarallah (b. Abi al-Lutf) is explicitly mentioned as the supervisor of the madrasa's waqf. See Zeʾevi, Dror, An Ottoman Century: The District of Jerusalem in the 1600s (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1996), 50.Google Scholar In the 16th and 17th centuries, the professor of al-Madrasa al-Ghadiriyya served as the guardian of this endowment even though members of the Dhulghadir (or Dhulqadir) dynasty were still alive and seem to have been considered its titular overseers. The Ghadiriyya's waqf included properties in Aleppo and the district of Marʿash. Possibly the professor served as the “local guardian” when the endowed properties were scattered throughout different parts of the empire. On the Ghadiriyya madrasa in the Ottoman period see Burgoyne, Mamluk Jerusalem, 528.

³³ On changes in the administration of endowments throughout the Arab lands in the 16th and 17th centuries, see Muhammad el-Zawahreh, Taisir Khalil, Religious Endowments and Social Life in the Ottoman Province of Damascus in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Karak: Publication of the Deanship of Research and Graduate Studies, Mutʿah University, 1995), 87–98Google Scholar; Behrens-Abouseif, Doris, Egypt's Adjustment to Ottoman Rule: Institutions, Waqf, and Architecture in Cairo (16th and 17th Centuries) (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), 145–58Google Scholar; and Jude Fitzgerald, Timothy, Ottoman Methods of Conquest: Legal Imperialism and the City of Aleppo, 1480–1570 (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2008), 232–46.Google Scholar

³⁴ Khadr Salameh, “Aspects of the Sijills of the Shariʿa Court in Jerusalem,” in Auld and Hillenbrand, Ottoman Jerusalem, 1:138.

³⁵ al-Ghazzi, Najm al-Din Muhammad ibn Muhammad, al-Kawakib al-Saʾira bi-Aʿyan al-Miʾa al-ʿAshira (Beirut: Jamiʿat Bayrut al-Amirikiyya, Kulliyat al-ʿUlum wa-l-Adab, 1945–58), 2:102.Google Scholar

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³⁸ Burgoyne, Mamluk Jerusalem, 545.

³⁹ Abdul-Karim Rafeq, “The ʿUlamaʾ of Ottoman Jerusalem (16th–18th centuries),” in Auld and Hillenbrand, Ottoman Jerusalem, 1:45–51.

⁴⁰ Hüseyin Efendi, Hezarfen, Telhisüʾl-Beyan fî Kavanın-i Al-i Osman (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1998), 197.Google Scholar Although written in the second half of the 17th century (completed in 1675–76), Hezarfen relied on older documents, such as “kanunnames, histories, old and new registers,” as well as on documents and registers from the court and the imperial divan. Ibid., 38.

⁴¹ Ibid., 200. See also Heyd, Uriel, “Some Aspects of the Ottoman Fetva,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 32 (1969): 45–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴² Anonymous, Hırzuʾl-Müluk, in Yücel, Yaşar, Osmanlı Devlet Teşkilatına dair Kaynaklar (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1988), 191–92.Google Scholar

⁴³ Stewart, Devin, “The Doctorate of Islamic Law in Mamluk Egypt and Syria,” in Law and Education in Medieval Islam: Studies in Memory of Professor George Makdisi, ed. Lowry, Joseph E., Stewart, Devin J., and Toorawa, Shawkat M. (Cambridge: E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Trust, 2004), 45–90.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ ʿAbd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi, al-Radd al-Wafi ʿala Jawab al-Haskafi ʿala Masʾalat al-Khiff al-Hanafi, Süleymaniye Library (Istanbul) MS Esad Efendi 1762, 154b–58b. For a discussion of the controversy concerning the Ottoman practice of appointing jurisconsults, see Mundy, Martha and Samuarez Smith, Richard, Governing Property, Making the Modern State: Law, Administration and Production in Ottoman Syria (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007), 22Google Scholar; and Guy Burak, “The Abu Hanifah of His Time,” 43–114.

⁴⁵ Baltacı, Cahid, XV–XVI. Asırlarda Osmanlı Medreseleri (Istanbul: Irfan Matbaası, 1976), 502–503Google Scholar; Repp, The Müfti of Istanbul, 65–66.

⁴⁶ For this reason, many of the imperial provincial madrasas of the Arab lands are absent from the biographical dictionaries, which are mostly devoted to “full members” of the hierarchy and graduates of its educational system. The Sulimaniyya madrasa in Damascus appears in these biographical dictionaries for as long as its muftis were graduates of the Ottoman madrasa system (i.e., until the late 16th century). But it is absent from dictionaries that document later centuries. Baltacı, XV–XVI. Osmanlı Medreseleri, 534–35.

⁴⁷ Mundy and Samuarez Smith, Governing Property, 11–39; Burak, “The Abu Hanifah of His Time,” 370–96.

⁴⁸ See, for example, the biographies of the state-appointed Hanafi muftis of the city in al-Muradi, Muhammad Khalil b. ʿAli, ʿUrf al-Basham fi man Waliya Fatwa al-Sham (Damascus: Dar Ibn Kathir, 1988).Google Scholar On the appointment of the Hanafi mufti of Mecca, see the account by the first appointed jurisconsult of the city, al-Makki, al-Shaykh Qutb al-Din al-Nahrawali, Kitab al-Iʿlam bi-Aʿlam Bayt Allah al-Haram (Beirut: Maktabat al-Khayats, 1964), 3:415–17.Google Scholar On the endowment in Damascus, see Kafescioğlu, Çiğdem, “‘In the Image of Rūm’: Ottoman Architectural Patronage in Sixteenth-Century Aleppo and Damascus,” Muqarnas 16 (1999): 86–87.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ As in Damascus, the first four state-appointed Hanafi muftis in Aleppo were graduates of the Ottoman madrasa system. Later muftiships were assigned to local jurists. Baltacı, XV–XVI. Asırlarda Osmanlı Medreseleri, 255–56. On the Khusrawiyya complex of Aleppo and on Divane Hüsrev Paşa, see Watenpaugh, Heghnar Zeitlian, The Image of an Ottoman City: Imperial Architecture and Urban Experience in Aleppo in the 16th and the 17th Centuries (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2004), 60–77Google Scholar; Steven Charles Wolf, “The Construction of Ottoman Aleppo: Modes and Meanings of Urban (Re-)organization” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2005), 102–61.

⁵⁰ Uzunçarsılı, Çandarlı Vezir Ailesi, 55.

⁵¹ Repp, The Müfti of Istanbul, 263–72.

⁵² Muhammad b. ʿAli Zayn al-ʿAbidin b. Muhammad b. Jalal al-Din b. Husayn b. Hasan b. ʿAli b. Muhammad al-Radawi, known as ʿAşik Çelebi, Dhayl al-Shaqaʾiq al-Nuʿmaniyya (Cairo: Dar al-Hidaya, 2007), 69. In another entry in this biographical dictionary he argues that around the mid-16th century the family monopolized the appointments to the madrasas of forty akçe (li-kawn iʿṭāʾ al-madāris bi-arbaʿīn makhṣūṣan bi-awlād al-fanārī ilā hadhā al-waqt). Ibid., 59. In the 17th century members of the family still held teaching positions. See Uğur, Ali, The Ottoman ʿUlema in the mid-17th Century: An Analysis of the Vaḳāʾiʿüʾl-fużalā of Meḥmed Şeyhī Efendi (Berlin: K. Schwarz, 1986), 64–65.Google Scholar On the phenomenon of families of jurists within the Ottoman learned hierarchy in later centuries, see Tezcan, Baki, “The Ottoman Mevali as ‘Lords of the Law,’” Journal of Islamic Studies 20 (2009): 383–407CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Zilfi, Madeline C., The Politics of Piety: The Ottoman Ulema in the Postclassical Age (1600–1800) (Minneapolis, Minn.: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1988).Google Scholar