17 Early Modern Islamicate Empire: New Forms of Religiopolitical Legitimacy Matthew Melvin‐Koushki Introduction Alexander of Macedon (356–323 bce), that great orientalizer, sought to marry in his imperial person East and West; he failed, but in failing became a symbol of political universalism. A millennium later his dream was realized in the form of universalizing Islamicate civilization. Persian, Roman, Hellenic, Indic, Abrahamic: under the spreading wings of the ‘Abbasid Caliphate (749–1258), all the intellectual, cultural, and political currents of Late Antiquity were retrieved, sifted through, and synthesized, a process that culminated at the end of the first millennium ce with Ibn Sina (980–1037), the Brethren of Purity (10th century), and the high literary‐theological culture of Baghdad most prominently (Fowden 2014). It was also in Baghdad—the Circle City at the center of Islamdom, the omphalos of Afro‐Eurasia, the axis mundi—that the caliphal‐sultanic‐jurisprudential model that was to govern Islamicate societies for centuries was first constructed (see Chapters 8 and 10). Yet the promise of sacral or cosmic kingship held out by the legacy of Late Antiquity was not realized by the ‘Abbasid caliphs, who saw their religious authority, initially heavily millenarian in tenor (Yücesoy 2009), severely curtailed by the rising scholarly class (‘ulama’; see Chapter 6). Elite, cosmopolitan, autonomous, and highly mobile, the latter successfully appointed themselves sole gatekeepers of Islam and Islamicate culture and primary political counterweight to caliph and sultan alike (Al‐Azmeh 2001: 182). At the same time, Shi‘ism, and then Sufism, laid The Wiley Blackwell History of Islam, First Edition. Edited by Armando Salvatore, Roberto Tottoli, Babak Rahimi, M. Fariduddin Attar, and Naznin Patel. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2018 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 354 Early Modernity and Civilizational Apogee (ca. 1453–1683) claim to the crucial category of walaya, the “sacral power” exclusive to the imams and the saints (awliya’) and denoting closeness to God and the House of the Prophet, as well as the temporal rulership entailed by this spiritual relationship (see Chapters 7 and 12). The ‘Abbasid caliphs, by contrast, were neither. ‘Alid shrine culture burgeoned, further attenuating caliphal charisma. Reacting to these challenges to their spiritual authority, caliphs transformed into sacral icons, with secular power monopolized by their agents, the sultans, from the 10th century onward (Moin 2015). Sunni juristic discourse on the religiopolitical legitimacy of the caliph took the opposite tack: it became increasingly traditionalist and pragmatist, emphasizing the titular leadership of the Arab Quraysh at the head of Islamdom and deemphasizing the personal virtues of the man holding that office, and requiring of sultans no personal virtues at all beyond their possession of raw military force and nominal support for Islamic law. With this growing divergence between Sunni and Shi‘i political theories (see Chapter 11), the former hegemonic after the demise of the Fatimid countercaliphate and the latter increasingly messianic and millenarian, the Helleno‐Irano‐Semitic ideal of the saint‐philosopher‐king migrated from the political mainstream of Islam to its Shi‘i‐Sufi periphery—and there it remained until the Mongols’ rending of Islamicate civilization in the mid‐13th century, the pivot of Islamic history. The Mongol conquest of Asia, both devastating and devastatingly creative, wrought a rupture of pandoric consequence for Islamicate religiopolitical culture. Most importantly, the destruction of the reigning, but increasingly brittle, caliphal‐sultanic‐jurisprudential model created a vacuum of legitimacy into which rushed the Shi‘i‐Sufi quicksilver category of walaya, now fully mature, far more flexible and adaptable than the model it replaced, and it soon became hegemonic throughout the Persianate world (Mir‐Kasimov 2014). Securing access to this power became a driving concern of ruling and scholarly elites, whether by way of Sufism, occultism,1 or ‘Alidism, and often eclectic combinations of all three. This new imperative led to a fierce and protracted struggle between sultan and saint for control of Islamdom during the 15th and 16th centuries; Sufis became sultans (as with the Safavids) and sultans became saint‐kings (as with the Mughals and Ottomans). Equally fierce and enduring was the competition for Chingizid prestige, achievable solely through Mongol descent or intermarriage and signifying universalist imperialism, which became a primary point of reference for ambitious dynasts of successor empires for centuries (especially for the neo‐Chingizid Uzbeks). With the return of Islamdom’s center of gravity to Iran in the wake of the Mongol renaissance, moreover, absolutist Persian royal ideas were powerfully revived. Together these three factors reignited dreams of saint‐philosopher‐kingship and universal cosmic imperialism. This quest, launched by Ilkhanid sovereigns and the scholar‐ideologues that served them (Brack 2016), was not pursued by every post‐ Mongol ruler, to be sure, but the overall trend is unmistakable from Amir Timur onward, and crescendoed with the approach of the Islamic millennium (1592 ce). Early Modern Islamicate Empire: New Forms of Legitimacy 355 The greatest rulers of the 16th century styled themselves divine kings, millennial sovereigns, talismanic cosmocrators, their holy bodies marrying heaven and earth, their sacral, transcendent, prophetic natures bringing final meaning to human history or inaugurating a dispensation wholly new. For the first time in history, world domination was within reach, this by combining the irresistible military potency of Alexander, Chingiz (r. 1206–1227), and Timur (r. 1370–1405), the great Lords of Conjunction, with the irresistible spiritual potency of the Shi‘i imams and the saints, true emperors of the world (Subrahmanyam 1997: 755). (‘Ali ibn Abi Talib in particular came to emblematize human perfection by combining both forms of potency in his sacral persona.) Simultaneously Chingizid and Persian, Islamic and post‐Islamic, the imperial ideologies developed in the early modern Turko‐Mongol, Perso‐Islamic world attained an unprecedented level of complexity and multivalency as ambitious dynasts jockeyed with one another in laying claim to religiopolitical legitimacy and primacy within Islamdom. And while all four early modern Islamicate empires—Ottoman, Safavid, Mughal, and Uzbek—drew on a common set of symbols and sciences to this end, each sought to create a universalist imperial brand distinct from those of its rivals. This chapter, then, surveys some of the most notable strategies of religiopolitical legitimation pursued by the Islamicate empires of what may be termed the High Persianate period, constituent members of the vast Persian cosmopolis reaching from the Balkans and Anatolia in the west to China and India in the east. The Eurocentric biases deeply ingrained in scholarship on the early modern period tend to distract from the simple fact that these empires, for centuries wealthier and more multiconfessional and cosmopolitan than their cognates in China or Europe, dominated the Afro‐Eurasian ecumene. By the late 16th century they together held sway over a full third of the human race (i.e. some 160 million of roughly 500 million souls) and comfortably controlled the globalizing Old World economy, centered on the Indian Ocean and the Silk Road (Casale 2010; Sood 2011). Outmoded declinist narratives aside, moreover, these empires also presided over the greatest expansion of Islam in history after the Arab conquest itself: of the 1.7 billion Muslims alive in 2017, the majority are descended from people who converted to Islam between 1300 and 1900, primarily in China, South and Southeast Asia, and East and West Africa (Bulliet 2013). At the same time, the population of the two largest Islamicate empires of the era, the Mughal and Ottoman, remained majority non‐Muslim; more of the world’s Muslims lived beyond their bounds than within them (Casale 2015: 327). The expansiveness, syncretism, and universalism of early modern Islamicate imperial ideologies was thus no mere rhetorical conceit, but a direct reflection of unprecedented religiocultural realities on the ground. Needless to say, a topic this large and complex cannot be adequately plumbed in a single chapter. I therefore focus on the formative period of this new brand of Islamic‐Persian‐Chingizid imperialism, to wit, the 15th–16th centuries, during which the constituent elements of its ideological repertoires were honed and 356 Early Modernity and Civilizational Apogee (ca. 1453–1683) assembled; most of them then remained in regular use, in some cases down to the 20th century. I also focus on those forms of religiopolitical legitimacy developed in the post‐Mongol period that are specifically new, or rather newly hybridized. Thus less attention will be paid, for example, to Turkic claims to ghazi or frontier warrior status, standard since the Samanids (819–1005) and Ghaznavids (977–1086) rose to power during the political fragmentation of the ‘Abbasid Caliphate, and strongly reasserted by the Ottomans and Uzbeks in particular (see Chapter 15). Nor will I deal with the continued, if eclectic, use of such venerable Islamic titles as caliph (khalifa) and sultan (sultan), including the juristic designation “caliph of the All‐merciful” (khalifat al‐rahman), first developed for Aq Quyunlu use and then applied to Uzbek and Ottoman rulers (Markiewicz 2015). We therefore begin with the Timurid Empire (1370–1507), primary heir of the Mongol Ilkhanids (1256–1353), with some attention to the Aq Quyunlu Empire (1369–1508) as its main competitor (see Chapter 13). Together they served as model for most subsequent states of the Persianate world, including those of the Mughals (1526–1858), Safavids (1501–1722), Uzbeks (1500–1747), and Ottomans (1281–1924), who fully articulated and actualized all the ideological potentialities generated in post‐Mongol Iran, while adding new elements to the mix. In what follows, the rival imperial brands developed by these six states during the 15th and 16th centuries will be very briefly characterized and contextualized, with emphasis on those themes that make them distinct from their Arab caliphal or Turkic sultanic predecessors: saint‐philosopher‐kingship, messianism and millenarianism, apocalypticism, ‘Alidism and imamophilia, occultism, Sufism, monism, radical ecumenism, divinization, reincarnationism, Persian absolutism, Islamic law versus dynastic law, Sunnism versus Shi‘ism. Saint‐Philosopher‐Kings Amir Timur (Tamerlane) sought to single‐handedly reconstitute the Mongol Empire and nearly succeeded in that project. Yet he was an inefficient conqueror, campaigning primarily for booty and to demonstrate his supremacy within Islamdom, and he often had to resubjugate rebellious territories. Timur’s highly flexible government continued the Saljuq and Ilkhanid patterns (see Chapters 9 and 13), but he subverted and realigned this nomadic patrimonial‐imperial structure to sole dependency on his own charismatic person. His death accordingly led to a long and debilitating succession struggle among his sons and their factions in which most of the vast territory he conquered was lost to Timurid control (Melvin‐Koushki 2012a). His son Shahrukh (r. 1409–1447), a conservative, Sunnizing ruler (Subtelny and Khalidov 1995), eventually emerged triumphant in that struggle, establishing rule over both Transoxiana and Iran. This crisis notwithstanding, Timur and his chroniclers were responsible for developing a Early Modern Islamicate Empire: New Forms of Legitimacy 357 distinctive and unprecedented religiopolitical ideology that was to be vastly influential for centuries, even among the Ottomans, whom Timur had crushed at the Battle of Ankara in 1402. Moreover, like the quattrocento in Italy, the long Timurid century was to be considered a golden age of high culture throughout the Persianate world and primary reference point for matters intellectual, religious, and aesthetic (Fleischer 1986: 141). Timur signaled his Chingizid legitimacy through marriage to a Chingizid princess, ruling through a puppet khan of the Chaghatay (see Chapter 13), and despite his status as world‐conqueror initially refused any titles grander than amir (“commander”) and güregen (“royal son‐in‐law”). (This political front was not continued by his successors, who ruled as Timurid sultans in their own right.) His claims to Islamic legitimacy, however, were more complex. Timur styled himself according to the Sunni Saljuq model, a Turkic ghazi championing the cause of Islam—his title amir evoking legendary heroes like Amir Hamza and ghazi kings like Mahmud of Ghazni (r. 998–1030; Chann 2009: 97)—and, like his Ilkhanid predecessors, was a great patron of Sufis to ensure access to their sacral power. Expanding further on the Saljuq and Ilkhanid models, he gave his universalist Islamic claims material expression by inaugurating a new style of monumental architecture that combines mausoleum, madrasa (residential college) and Sufi lodge (khanaqah) within a single, massive complex, bodying forth his personal sanctity and Islamic transcendence. Timur’s towering ambition and irresistible charisma as a Chingizid Muslim world conqueror thus presented a religious challenge. Timurid ideologues met this challenge by recasting him, after his death, as a sacral vessel of walaya: they asserted his direct descent from both ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib (601–661), emperor of the physical and spiritual realms, and Alanqo’a, legendary princess‐mother of the Mongols, via immaculate conception, as Timur’s famous tombstone inscription attests (Moin 2012: 37–9). A recently discovered Timurid genealogical chart even transforms Timur into a Yasavi Sufi (Morimoto 2016). The most potent symbol of Timur’s imperial universalism, however, was the title sahib‐qiran (“Lord of Conjunction”). This title, purely astrological (and possibly Middle Persian) in origin (Chann 2009: 94), became a central and permanent component of all subsequent political platforms developed in the Turko‐Mongol, Perso‐Islamic world, including those of the Ottomans, the Uzbeks, the Safavids, and the Mughals, and was still routinely brandished by the likes of Nader Shah Afshar (r. 1736–1747), Fath ‘Ali Shah Qajar (r. 1797–1834), and Nasr Allah Khan Mangït (r. 1827–1860) to mark their Chingizid‐Timurid legitimacy (Moin 2012: 23–55; Subrahmanyam 2000: 367). While astrology (‘ilm al‐nujum, ahkam al‐nujum) had long been patronized by ruling elites, including ‘Abbasid and Fatimid caliphs (Gutas 1998), and conjunction astrology had been definitively worked out by Abu Ma‘shar Balkhi (787–886), this title only began to be systematically used from the 13th century onward, primarily in relation to Saljuq, Ilkhanid, and Mamluk rulers. Al‐Zahir Baybars I (r. 1260–1277), for instance, institutionalizer of the Mamluk Sultanate and chief scourge to both Mongols and Crusaders (mubid al‐faranj wa-l-tatar), added 358 Early Modernity and Civilizational Apogee (ca. 1453–1683) to his claim to be the restorer of the ‘Abbasid Caliphate and “Servitor of the Two Sanctuaries” (khadim al‐haramayn) the double title Iskandar al‐zaman and sahib al‐qiran, “Alexander of the Age” and “Lord of Conjunction” (Chann 2009: 95). With Timur, however, this latter title became so pivotal to his imperial‐sacral persona—both supra‐Chingizid and supra‐Islamic—that its invocation thereafter came to signify adherence to the specifically Timurid model of kingship. This “timuridization” of sahib‐qiran as a title was accomplished by chroniclers and scholar‐occultists in service to that dynasty, who deployed it to assert Timur’s historical equivalency with both Alexander the Great and Chingiz Khan, his primary models for world conquest. It also suggested a cosmic connection with the Prophet Muhammad himself, bringer of the final and universal religiopolitical dispensation that is Islam. The conjunction the title refers to is almost certainly the Saturn‐Jupiter conjunction in Scorpio that occurred in October 1365, just before Timur began his career of conquest. Its significance lies in the fact that this was the first such conjunction to recur in that sign since April 571, a date traditionally associated with the birth of Muhammad. In short, the Timurid dispensation is here being posited, in strictly occult‐scientific terms, as the preordained renewal (tajdid) of Islam itself, as well as the fulfillment of the dreams of Alexander and Chingiz. To further prove the cosmic nature of Timur’s absolute sovereignty, the same scholar‐occultists added another science to their arguments: the science of letters (‘ilm al‐huruf), or lettrism, Hebrew kabbalah’s coeval Arabic twin (Melvin‐Koushki 2012b). Most significantly, they posited this science as the core of the philosophia perennis, a legacy of the prophet‐king Solomon and his disciples, the sages of Greece (especially Pythagoras and Plato), and the preserve of the House of the Prophet during the Islamic dispensation. While programmatic, this binary schema—lettrism as the science of the imams and the ancients—appears to be historically justified. Hellenic in origin, lettrism entered Islam at its inception under Shi‘i auspices, being associated in the first place with ‘Ali and Ja‘far al‐Sadiq, as well as the mysterious isolated letters opening certain Qur’anic suras (muqatta‘at). It was then progressively philosophicized, most notably by Ibn Masarra (d. 931) and the Brethren of Purity, such that it emerged by the 10th century as a primary expression of Islamic Neopythagoreanism. The growing Sufi challenge to both Shi‘ism and philosophy, culminating in the 13th century with the explosion of the Sufi brotherhoods, then led to the science’s sanctification through its absorption into Sufism. Ibn al‐‘Arabi (1165–1240) and Ahmad al‐Buni (d. 1225?) in particular rendered it not only the most Islamic of the occult sciences, but the most Islamic, and the most universal, of all sciences, arguing for its status as the “science of the saints” (‘ilm al‐awliya’) par excellence. As a consequence, by the late 14th century, and beginning in Mamluk Cairo, lettrism, as preeminent philosophicized‐sanctified Shi‘i‐Sufi occult science, had begun to attract the patronage of ruling elites as a direct and reliable means of accessing walaya. Epitomizing this trend, Timur, the Starlord, was thus fashioned a “Letterlord” (sahib‐huruf) in equal measure, his glory inscribed in the text of the Qur’an and mathematically encoded in the Early Modern Islamicate Empire: New Forms of Legitimacy 359 cosmos itself. (Unlike sahib‐qiran, the title sahib‐huruf does not appear in the sources as such, but is here proposed as a heuristic for flagging the central importance of lettrist arguments to imperial ideology construction from the Timurids onward; for references see Melvin‐Koushki and Pickett 2016). The two scholar‐occultists most responsible for developing this dual astrological‐ lettrist platform for Timur’s imperial legitimacy were Ibn Turka (1369–1432), Shafi‘i judge of Isfahan and Yazd and the most influential occult philosopher of 15th‐century Iran, and Sharaf al‐Din Yazdi (ca. 1370s–1454), dynastic historian to the Timurids, his student and friend (Melvin‐Koushki 2012b; Binbaş 2016). It first appears in Yazdi’s famed Zafarnama (“Book of Conquest”), a history of Timur completed before 1436, and seems to have spread in popularity almost immediately. From this point forward ambitious Turko‐Mongol, Perso‐Islamic sovereigns began to compete for the titles Starlord and Letterlord, eagerly patronizing those scholar‐occultists qualified to recast the astrological and lettrist calculations in their favor. Later in the same century, for instance, this service was rendered to Uzun Hasan (r. 1457–1478) by Jalal al‐Din Davani (1427–1502), prominent Shirazi philosopher and ideological mainstay of the Aq Quyunlu Empire (Woods 1999: 145). Davani’s model was further developed by historian‐secretaries working at the Aq Quyunlu court, including his students Fazl Allah Khunji Isfahani (1455–1521) and Idris Bidlisi (1457–1520). The latter then repurposed it for Ottoman use in his Hasht bihisht (“Eight Paradises”) as part of his argument for that dynasty’s historical supremacy within Islamdom, second only to the “Rightly Guided” (rashidun) caliphs (Melvin‐Koushki 2011; Markiewicz 2015). This dual astrological‐lettrist ideological platform appears to have remained popular throughout the Persianate world until at least the 17th century, when the Mughal Emperor Shahjahan (r. 1628–1657) made identical claims to underscore his Timurid legitimacy (Moin 2012: 23–4, 36–60). Shahjahan, of course, was likewise responsible for building the Taj Mahal, a masterpiece of imperial Timurid architecture—one that functions as a giant mu‘amma, or logogriph, and stands as both model of paradise and embodiment of God’s Throne on earth (Parodi 2000). The most influential ideologues of the 15th‐century Persianate world, then, were occult philosophers rendering their services to Timurid or Aq Quyunlu patrons. Not coincidentally, these individuals were also preeminent exponents of a new metaphysics inspired by Ibn al‐‘Arabi, who in their systematizing hands became the foremost theoretician of walaya, and hence of primary importance to both occultist and political theory. Specifically, the Sufi doctrine of spiritual government, given fullest expression by the Andalusi master, posits a Pole (qutb) as true and sole ruler of the world in each age—a doctrine jealous dynasts increasingly endeavored to coopt. By the late 15th century, this title had become standard in courtly usage. Sultan Bayezid II (r. 1481–1512), for instance, was hailed as Supreme Pole (qutb al‐aqtab) by the Ottoman littérateur Firdawsi Tawil (d. after 1512) in his Qutbnama (Şen 2017), as was Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent (r. 1520–1566) by the magistrate‐Sufi Mevlana ‘Isa (fl. 1543) in his Cami‘ ül‐meknunat 360 Early Modernity and Civilizational Apogee (ca. 1453–1683) (“Compendium of Secrets”; Fleischer 1992: 165). Ibn al‐‘Arabi himself, moreover, was explicitly recruited as a symbolic linchpin of imperial ambitions, most famously by Bayezid’s successor, Sultan Selim the Grim (r. 1512–1520), who declared him the patron saint of the Ottoman Empire upon his conquest of Mamluk Damascus in 1516. His definitive theorization of sacral power aside, the (in)famous doctrine of the oneness of being (wahdat al‐wujud) associated with Ibn al‐‘Arabi was likewise immediately adaptable to expansive and universalizing imperial ideologies. Yet this doctrine was also invoked in challenge to the same imperial ideologies, most notably by Shaykh Badr al‐Din of Simavna (executed 1416). This jurist‐occultist—who, not surprisingly, had studied law and lettrism together with Ibn Turka in Cairo—inspired the most successful rebellion in Ottoman history with his platform of radical Ibn al‐‘Arabian monism, to be expressed religiopolitically, economically, and militarily in the form of pure communism and monotheistic communion among the impoverished Muslim and Christian peasantry of Rumelia and armed resistance to oppressive Ottoman elites (Balivet 1995; see Chapters 13 and 15). The 15th century thus witnessed an occultist arms race, as it were, for messianic and sacral forms of political legitimacy. It was initiated by Timur, whose messianic persona was constellated by Chingizid, Sunni, ‘Alid, and occult‐scientific inputs. But he did not himself lay claim to saint‐philosopher‐king status. That claim was rather made by his grandson Iskandar Sultan (r. 1409–1414), whose culturally brilliant if brief reign in Shiraz and Isfahan served as model for intellectually and spiritually ambitious dynasts the Persianate world over. His successful performance of saint‐philosopher‐kingship was predicated on his identification with ‘Ali and the Prophetic House, on the one hand, and his patronage of astronomers, astrologers, and various other occultists on the other (Aubin 1957). Their number included in the first place Ibn Turka, some of whose most influential works on lettrism were commissioned by Iskandar, and whose presentation of the science as quintessentially Solomonic and Imamic was clearly intended to advance his patron’s claim to similar status (Melvin‐Koushki 2012b: 52, 88–90, 318–20). Much has been made of Iskandar’s interest in astronomy and astrology in particular; he employed scholars of the caliber of Mahmud ibn Yahya Kashi (also known as ‘Imad al‐Munajjimin, “Pillar among Astrologers”), hosted debates on a variety of subjects (Binbaş 2014), and tasked his book workshop (kitabkhana) with the production of gorgeous, luxury compendia on the various philosophical, mathematical, literary, and religious sciences. It is not an accident that one of the only two Islamicate illuminated horoscopes to have reached us is Iskandar’s (Caiozzo 2005). His expansive patronage program aside, the legitimacy of Iskandar’s claim to being a spiritually perfected philosopher‐scientist in his own right is best seen in the preface he wrote for a comprehensive Persian manual of mathematical astronomy (‘ilm‐i hay’at), Jami‘‐i sultani (“The Sultanic Compendium”), possibly his own work as well. In this preface the Timurid ruler provides an overview of Early Modern Islamicate Empire: New Forms of Legitimacy 361 his personal intellectual and spiritual development as proof of his status as Perfect Man (insan‐i kamil) and universal ruler, emperor of realms both seen and unseen. Or as he puts it: Inasmuch as boundless divine solicitude chose this wretch from among all His creatures and arrayed the stature of his aptitude and noble purpose with the robe of physical and spiritual caliphate, He adorned the decree of his ascendancy with the seal of the sultan is God’s vicegerent on earth (al‐sultan khalifat Allah fi l‐ard) and illuminated the niche of his nature with the radiant secrets of My saints are under My domes—none knows them but I, making his body (zahir‐ash) the site of manifestation for the intricate virtues of kingship (saltanat u padshahi) and his spirit (batin‐ash) revelatory of intricate sciences and metaphysical knowledge. (Iskandar Sultan 2008: 209) Most significantly, this is the first post‐Mongol use of the term caliphate to refer to saint‐philosopher‐kingship—the ‘Abbasid model now being wholly retired, yet simultaneously restored to its original millenarian potency. The impressive Islamic universalism of Iskandar’s self‐styling aside, he then claims a total mastery of “all the traditional and rational sciences in both fundamental principles and applications” (Iskandar Sultan 2008: 209), including theology, philosophy, and Sufism. But he finally declares astronomy‐astrology (‘ilm‐i nujum) to be of all sciences the most useful to kings—with the exception of lettrism (‘ilm‐i huruf), the sole universal science in its status as chiefest branch of the science of divine unity (‘ilm‐i tawhid). Here again we see the genesis of the distinctive Timurid astrological‐lettrist ideological platform, as well as the central importance of patronage of astronomy‐ astrology to claims of philosopher‐kingship in the Persianate world. A few years later, Ulugh Beg (r. at Samarqand 1409–1449), Iskandar’s cousin from the rival Shahrukhid line, made precisely this claim on the basis of his establishment of the world’s leading observatory in Samarqand and his personal mastery of mathematical astronomy. The great Anatolian astronomer Qazizada Rumi (ca. 1359–1432), for instance, second director of the observatory (and not coincidentally a close friend to Ibn Turka), lionizes his patron as al‐sultan al‐faylasuf, or sultan‐scientist (Fazlıoğlu 2008: 41). The court of Sultan Husayn Bayqara (r. 1469–1506) in Herat, moreover, has been compared to that of Renaissance Florence in terms of cultural and intellectual florescence (Subtelny 2010: 190). The Timurid imperial cooptation of both Sufi and scholarly discourses is similarly emblematized in that dynasty’s adoption of an explicitly messianic title: mujaddid (“renewer”). Referring to those renewers of Islam whose advent was expected at the head of each century since the Prophet’s announcement to this effect, the most prominent spiritual‐scholarly authorities of the pre‐Mongol era or Earlier Middle Period, including Abu Hamid al‐Ghazali (d. 1111) in the 6th century ah and Fakhr al‐Din Razi (1149–1209) in the 7th, were routinely awarded this status, typically in their own lifetimes. In the post‐Mongol period, however, the reintegration of religious and political spheres led to the frequent assumption of 362 Early Modernity and Civilizational Apogee (ca. 1453–1683) the mujaddid status by rulers. The first to be declared such was, predictably, a Timurid, Timur’s own son Shahrukh. In various courtly works, including the Nasayih‐i shahrukhi (“Shahrukhid Counsels”) of Jalal al‐Din Qayini (d. 1435), the previously mentioned Zafarnama of Yazdi, and the Matla‘ al‐sa‘dayn (“Dawn of the Two Auspicious Planets”) of ‘Abd al‐Razzaq Samarqandi (1413–1482), Shahrukh is styled the mujaddid of the 9th Islamic century (Subtelny and Khalidov 1995: 212). As with the titles Starlord and Letterlord, mujaddid‐hood became an important site of imperial competition within the Persianate world from this point forward. It reflected in particular the growing Timurid–Aq Quyunlu rivalry, as Timurid claims on this front were first challenged by Aq Quyunlu court historians. Together with his astrological‐lettrist arguments for Aq Quyunlu primacy, Khunji, interestingly enough, conflates Uzun Hasan with his son Ya‘qub (r. 1478–1490), while referring to the hadith compendium Jami‘ al‐usul of Ibn al‐Athir (1160–1233) to prove that mujaddid‐hood need not be limited to one individual nor even a jurist, as the demands of each century are different (Melvin‐Koushki 2011: 17). In sum: The markedly different demands of the deeply messianic 9th Islamic century were answered by the articulation of a new, prototypically Ilkhanid brand of Chingizid‐Islamic‐Persian universalist absolutism, of saint‐philosopher‐ kingship, which entailed the absorption into the royal persona of every available marker of religiopolitical prestige, whether Chingizid or Islamic, Solomonic or Imamic, Sunni or Shi‘i, Sufi or scholarly, occult or manifest, Arabic or Persian, Persian or Turkic. Most of the components used in the construction of Ottoman, Safavid, Uzbek, and Mughal imperial ideologies were activated and assembled by Timurid and Aq Quyunlu dynasts and the scholar‐occultists who served them, some of whom also attached themselves to, or were patronized by, the neighboring Mamluk, Ottoman, Uzbek, or regional Indian courts, thereby creating a cohesive High Persianate imperial culture across a vast geographical spread. Though some of these components were emphasized and others deemphasized over the subsequent centuries of imperial rivalry and self‐branding by individual dynasts, all remained very much in play insofar as they furthered dreams of world domination—dreams that seemed ever more realizable with the approach of the Islamic millennium. Shi‘i Sufi‐Shahs The sweeping Safavid conquest of Timurid‐Aq Quyunlu Iran at the beginning of the 16th century is often interpreted as wreaking a permanent rupture in the High Persianate imperial and cultural continuum, driven in the first place by Shah Isma‘il’s (r. 1501–1524) embrace of Twelver Shi‘i Islam as the new state religion of Iran. Islamdom would thenceforth be rent by a sharp Sunni–Shi‘i divide that remains politically salient to the present. Iran itself, the birthplace of Sunni Islam Early Modern Islamicate Empire: New Forms of Legitimacy 363 (see Chapter 6), was made womb to a new form of messianic political Shi‘ism whose most recent recrudescence was the Islamic Revolution of 1979, predicated on Ayatollah Ruh Allah Khumayni’s (Khomeini; 1902–1989) doctrine of vilayat‐i faqih (“guardianship of the jurist” during the Occultation of the Twelfth Imam), a seemingly unprecedented form of philosopher‐kingship (Arjomand 1988: 17). The 16th century witnessed the careful co‐engineering by ruling and scholarly elites of new and distinctive imperial brands across the Persianate world, to be sure, and the imamophilia and confessional ambiguity that had prevailed in preceding centuries (see Chapter 15)—here emblematized by Timur’s claim to ‘Alid descent— was indeed replaced by a deliberately hardened confessional division between Shi‘i and Sunni (Melvin‐Koushki 2012b: 69–77). But the departure this represents is stark only in hindsight, swayed by centuries of imperial and theological propaganda. The long and gradual process whereby Iran was made bastion of Twelver Shi‘ism should not distract us from the much deeper cultural continuities that made the Persian cosmopolis a cohesive unit until the 20th century. Most importantly, early modern Muslim dynasts, Sunni and Shi‘i alike, continued to compete fiercely over the category of walaya, still accessible solely through the integrated spiritual‐ scientific complex of Sufism, occultism, and ‘Alidism. Structurally, moreover, the Safavid state itself may be considered the direct continuation of the Aq Quyunlu Turkmen polity it displaced. Shah Isma‘il was keenly aware of his status as Uzun Hasan’s grandson, and declared it his mission to punish Aq Quyunlu decadence with the purifying fire of conquest (Woods 1999: 167–72). Furthermore, his infamously fanatical qizilbash (“redhead”) horde, the basis of Safavid power during the first decades of the dynasty’s rule and called such in reference to their red, 12‐pointed headgear, was largely constituted of Turkmen tribes from the former Aq Quyunlu territories in Eastern Anatolia and Azerbaijan. Yet Isma‘il was more spiritually ambitious than his predecessors, both Aq Quyunlu and Timurid: the Sufi conqueror declared himself the reincarnation of ‘Ali, even (in some poetic flights) the incarnation of God. The qizilbash, simultaneously his Sufi murids (“disciples”) and his adoring worshippers, reportedly raged into battle without armor, trusting in Isma‘il’s divine potency for protection—a strategy that worked devastatingly well until the disastrous Battle of Chaldiran against the Ottomans in 1514. Isma‘il’s claim to divinity, shocking and offensive to later orthodoxizing tastes, was quietly elided from the official Safavid ideological platform during the course of the 16th century (Babayan 2002: 297–301). His successors Shah Tahmasb I (r. 1524–1576) and Shah ‘Abbas I (r. 1587–1629) in particular were responsible for the routinization of Isma‘il’s messianic charisma, such that by the end of the century he emerged as a more sedate Shi‘i Sufi‐shah, heir to the ancient Iranian imperial tradition (as revived by the Samanids), Starlord avatar of Alexander, and pure vessel of walaya. The subsequent consolidation, even domestication, of Safavid ideology aside, however, Isma‘il stands as a culmination of trends in organized Sufism in the post‐ Mongol period (see Chapter 15). Even as Timurid and Aq Quyunlu dynasts were 364 Early Modernity and Civilizational Apogee (ca. 1453–1683) developing their claims to cosmic kingship, the spiritual and material power and influence of the Sufi brotherhoods massively burgeoned, fueled in the first place by messianism and millenarian expectations. Some of the more extremist groups of the period, like the Hurufiyya, openly declared the end of the age of Arabic prophecy and the beginning of a new, Persian dispensation—the age of divinity (Bashir 2005). Others, like the Safawiyya, transformed from staid Sunnis into a militant Shi‘i conquering force during the second half of the 15th century, strategically tapping into the ubiquitous popular belief, vexing to Timurid dynasts, that the mahdi (“savior”) was on the verge of returning at the head of a Sufi army to impose righteousness on the world by force. Safawi Sufi militancy was thus hardly exceptional, apart from being the most successful instance of its type (see Chapter 15). (The Sabzavari Sarbidaran (1337–1386—Shi‘i‐Sufi “gallowsbirds,” kamikazes—and the Khuzistani Musha‘sha‘iyya (1435–1514) are other examples of this phenomenon.) And such extremism (ghuluww) notwithstanding, even the most sober and scholarly Sufis of the 15th‐century Persianate world adopted the Iranian royal title shah as an assertion of Ibn al‐‘Arabian theories of spiritual government and human perfection, entailing precisely divinization (ta’alluh) by means of walaya (see Chapter 19). In short, Shah Isma‘il’s flamboyant spiritual‐imperial identity was in no way a departure from precedent, but rather an organic product of this 15th‐century messianic cultural matrix. Even his embrace of Twelver Shi‘ism was simply an attempt to edge out competitors by monopolizing, both theologically and magically, the sacral power of the imams. The Safavid conquest of Iran, then, represents the religiopolitical triumph of Sufi over sultan; but in triumphing, the Sufis became such successful sultans as to disavow their Sufihood entirely. The increasingly pressing need to routinize Isma‘il’s charisma due to the political instability and decentralizing tendency inherent in its messianic qizilbash‐Sufi framework led his successors to seek other, more controllable means of accessing walaya. For Shah Tahmasb, who presided over this process of imperial routinization and religious orthodoxization, such means naturally included the occult sciences. He seems to have been particularly obsessed with the divinatory science of geomancy (‘ilm al‐raml). The Venetian diplomat Vincenzo degli Alessandri (1530–after 1595) reported, for instance, that the Safavid shah had not left his palace for a decade, so devoted was he to practicing the science as substantiation for his claim to prophet‐like sanctity and vision. His primary tutor in this field was the Azerbaijani occultist Haydar Rammal (d. after 1560), who subsequently decamped for the Ottoman realm and became an even more influential fixture at the court of Sultan Suleyman (Fleischer 2009). Haydar is representative, moreover, of a larger trend: Safavid Iran, and particularly Shiraz, was a major exporter of professional occultists to the neighboring Ottoman and Mughal realms during the 16th century (Melvin‐Koushki 2018). Astrology and lettrism too enjoyed continued popularity among Safavid ruling and scholarly elites, who pointedly updated the signature Timurid astrological‐ lettrist ideological platform to account for the approaching Islamic millennium. Early Modern Islamicate Empire: New Forms of Legitimacy 365 Thus the title sahib‐qiran was incorporated as a standard element of Safavid imperial rhetoric, while the ontological equivalency of Isma‘il and ‘Ali was proved by means of lettrist argument. The close identification of occultism with both Sufism and Shi‘ism remained in effect through at least the height of Shah ‘Abbas’s reign, as contemporary scholarship attests. Most telling in this regard is the schema offered by Abu ’l‐Qasim Kaziruni (fl. 1605), a prominent Shirazi scholar in the service of Shah ‘Abbas, in his Sullam al‐samavat (“Ladder to the Heavens”), an eclectic work devoted to constructing an intellectual‐religious pedigree for his patrons that is simultaneously Twelver Shi‘i, Sufi, and occultist (see Chapter 19). To this end, the Sullam includes a long chapter taxonomizing the occult sciences as a subset not of natural or mathematical philosophy, as they were usually classified, but exclusively of walaya, here presented as Sufi‐style sainthood rather than a Twelver theological category (Kaziruni 2007: 81–130). That is to say, by the end of the 16th century a Shi‘i‐Sufi‐occultist amalgam was still the engine of Safavid imperial ideology. This amalgam did eventually give way to a newly constructed Twelver Shi‘i orthodoxy in the 17th century, a process that entailed the aggressive marginalization of both Sufism and (to a much lesser extent) occultism (Anzali 2017). Yet the agents of this transmutation were precisely charismatic scholar‐occultists of the caliber of Shaykh Baha’i (1547–1621), the hugely influential Safavid shaykh al‐islam and polymath extraordinaire, who is remembered to this day as one of the most powerful practicing occultists and letter mages of his generation. Indeed, in some contemporary sources, the greatest intellectuals of Shah ‘Abbas’s transformative reign—characterized by a more pragmatic and bureaucratic approach to government—are valorized as master talismanists responsible for protecting the realm and letter‐magically directing its political course. These include the famed philosophers Mir Damad (1562–1631) and Mir Findiriski (ca. 1563–1640), founding members of the so‐ called school of Isfahan, a lettrist and an alchemist, respectively (Melvin‐Koushki 2018). It is not an accident in this connection that the general thrust of Safavid philosophy is in the direction of ta’alluh (“theosis”), especially as definitively formulated by Mulla Sadra (d. 1636; Rizvi 2009: 24–6; see Chapter 19). As elite and popular forms of piety in Iran were thus rerouted from persophilic and imamophilic Sunni Sufism into doctrinaire Twelver Shi‘ism, the scholars responsible for this rerouting emerged as religiopolitical counterweights to their Safavid patrons, whose absolutist claims were thereby impaired—shades of the triumph of charismatic ‘ulama’ over messianic ‘Abbasid caliphs in the 9th century. This development then served, over three centuries later, as the basis for Khomeini’s millenarian doctrine of rule by jurist. The reign of Shah ‘Abbas the Great (r. 1587–1629), which significantly bracketed the Islamic millennium (1592 ce), governed by the momentous 1583 Saturn‐Jupiter conjunction immediately preceding it, is universally identified as the apogee of Safavid power and imperial glory. Despite continued patronage of astrologers and other occultists at the Safavid court, however, the shah encountered difficulties in 366 Early Modernity and Civilizational Apogee (ca. 1453–1683) claiming millennial sovereignty. His head court astrologer warned him of an ominous celestial conjunction, indicating the demise of royal persons, that would coincide with the moment of the millennium; Shah ‘Abbas was therefore advised to abdicate his throne for its three‐day duration in favor of a puppet replacement, then execute his replacement in fulfillment of the celestial sign, thereupon reassuming the mantle of kingship. For this unhappy role was chosen an adept of the Nuqtawiyya movement, a schismatic branch of the Hurufiyya (Babayan 2002: 350–1). The Nuqtawi platform of persophilic millenarianism and reincarnationist materialism (Babayan 2002: 57–108; Amanat 1996) was increasingly challenging the integrity of Safavid ideology. It was even rumored about that Shah ‘Abbas, who conducted a brutal, hereticidal campaign of persecution against the Nuqtawis in 1593/4, was himself a Nuqtawi adept jealously safeguarding the purity of Nuqtawi doctrine by executing and exiling the unworthy (Babayan 2002: 104; Amanat 1996: 291–2). As that may be, the ideological consequences of the Nuqtawi exodus to India during the late 16th century were more far‐reaching than is usually appreciated. In particular, evidence suggests that the affiliated Azari movement, founded by the neo‐Zoroastrian ideologue known pseudonymously as Azar Kaywan (1533–1618)—another Shirazi occultist, and associate of Shaykh Baha’i, Mir Damad, and Mir Findiriski—was then attempting to construct a millennial ideology for Shah ‘Abbas along Persian absolutist, Islamo‐Zoroastrian, and astrological lines, involving most notably elaborate rituals of planetary worship as pivotal to the performance of cosmic or solar kingship (Sheffield 2014). This platform was finally rejected by Shah ‘Abbas, infamously capricious with respect to religious matters, who rather chose to focus on establishing his personal infallibility and absolutist power as centralizer of Iran; a brilliant and sober manager of the Safavid realm responsible for its greatest cultural and economic florescence, and highly attracted to the Timurid model of divinely mandated kingship as well as to certain elements of Nuqtawi doctrine, he nevertheless declined to sacralize his royal persona to a degree that would be competitive with those of his Mughal and Ottoman counterparts. Thus spurned, the Azaris decamped for India, and in Emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605) found a patron far more receptive. Millennial Sovereigns The claim to millennial sovereignty by the Mughal Emperor Jalal al‐Din Akbar was the most inventive—the most ‘heretical’—of the 16th‐century Persianate world. As we have seen, religiopolitical syncretism was intrinsic to early‐modern Islamicate imperial ideologies. Yet what was achieved by Akbar remained unmatched by any dynast before or after him. Among his contemporaries, the only performance of millennial sovereignty to rival Akbar’s in syncretic complexity Early Modern Islamicate Empire: New Forms of Legitimacy 367 was that of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Lawgiver (qanuni) and second King Solomon, whose reign nevertheless failed to attain the Islamic millennium, and whose image was later recast in terms of strict Sunni rectitude. His grandson Sultan Murad III (r. 1574–1595) was highly sensitive to his own status as king of the millennium, heavily investing to this end in both Sufism and the occult sciences, particularly astrology and oneiromancy, and identifying his royal persona with ‘Ali in the time‐honored Timurid‐Safavid manner; but Murad was introverted, self‐obsessed, and pacifist, perhaps even epileptic, and his reign is usually characterized, rather unjustly, as the beginning of Ottoman decline (Fleischer 1992; Felek 2017). By contrast, Emperor Akbar was responsible for transforming and expanding Mughal India, massively enlarged by virtue of his military genius, into a religioculturally cohesive polity, and for marrying the Persian and Sanskrit cosmopolises (Truschke 2016a), thereby making it at its height the wealthiest and most multiconfessional and second most populous (after Ming China) of all early modern empires, east and west. For the first time in the history of the subcontinent, Muslim and Hindu, Jain and Jesuit, Buddhist and atheist, magus and mage, Sufi and yogi alike enjoyed equality before the law, a comparable sociopolitical status, and an enthusiastic welcome at court. Akbar created this ecumenically promiscuous, universalist utopia—governed by the celebrated Akbarian principle sulh‐i kull, or “universal harmony,” an alchemical‐medical reference—by asserting his personal transcendence of both religion and history as the millennial manifestation of the divine light formerly incarnated through Alanqo’a, mother of the Mongols, and Mary, mother of Jesus—in short, the holiest being of the age (Moin 2012: 137; Sheffield 2014). Holy beings, naturally, require imperial cults. The divine king Akbar accordingly chose the moment of the great Saturn‐Jupiter conjunction in 1583, heralding the end of the first Islamic millennium—the end of the Islamic dispensation itself—to inaugurate his infamous Divine Religion (din‐i ilahi): a reincarnationist, vegetarianist doctrine centered on the worship of Akbar as divine. He instructed his disciples, for instance, to greet each other with the declaration Allahu Akbar—an Islamic phrase now meaning something distinctly “un‐Islamic” (Moin 2012: 144). While membership in this Safavid‐style royal discipleship cult was modest, being restricted to the highest courtly circles, it stood as potent symbol of Akbar’s self‐understanding as inaugurator of a new historical era and religiopolitical dispensation, synthesizing and superseding all that went before. Equally potent to this end was his institution of planetary worship as the basis of daily court ritual. Like his father Humayun (r. 1530–1540; 1555–1556), as well as his Ottoman cognates from Bayezid II to Murad III (Şen 2017; Felek 2017), Akbar heavily patronized astrologers, geomancers, and other occultists as a primary prop to his imperial ideology; also like his father, but unlike his Ottoman peers, he sought to royally mirror the celestial realm by means of elaborate astral‐magical enactments (Moin 2012: 121–2; Truschke 2016b). Abkar thereby fashioned himself as talismanic cosmocrator, his physical body marrying heaven to earth in order to rule the whole. 368 Early Modernity and Civilizational Apogee (ca. 1453–1683) As suggested above, these three major elements of Akbar’s imperial ideology— Universal Harmony, Divine Religion, and planetary worship—appear to have been largely inspired by Nuqtawi and especially Azari exiles, whose millenarian platform of solar‐cosmic kingship and astrocratic ecumenical utopianism had been rejected by Shah ‘Abbas. Not so Akbar: it contained precisely the valency that the Mughal Emperor wished to harness, potent enough to erase the shame of Humayun’s submission to Shah Tahmasb still haunting Mughal dynastic memory. These materialist (dahri) groups are lumped together in some contemporary sources under the rubric ahl‐i nujum u tanasukh, “star‐worshippers and reincarnationists” (Dihdar 1996: 131); this, as it happens, is a rather precise descriptor for Akbar himself. There is considerable textual evidence to support this connection, moreover; the primary architect of Mughal imperial culture, Abu ’l-Fazl ibn Mubarak (1551– 1602), Akbar’s vizier, together with his brother Fayzi (1547–1595), Mughal poet laureate, conducted a fascinated correspondence with Azar Kaywan himself in the 1570s (Sheffield 2014). Even Akbar’s close identification with Jesus—whence the heavily Catholic‐trinitarian tenor of later Mughal imperial iconography (Moin 2012: 233)—, another major element of his ideological platform, is indirectly attributable to Azari influence. That is to say, the doctrine of sulh‐i kull, evidently the direct descendant of the Azari doctrine of amizish‐i farhang or “mixing of cultures” (Sheffield 2014), significantly enhanced the already powerful religiopolitical syncretism of Turko‐Mongol, Perso‐Islamic culture, such that Jesus too could emblematize Islamicate imperialism to no degree less than ‘Ali, Chingiz, or Alexander. Akbar’s shocking innovations notwithstanding (see also Chapter 18), Mughal—that is, Indo‐Timurid—ideology remained firmly pegged to its Timurid source. Exiled to India by the Safavids and Uzbeks, Mughal emperors, from Babur (r. 1526–1530) onward, often expressed nostalgic longing for their Transoxianan homeland. They also continued to measure themselves against Timur himself. Predictably, Akbar went so far as to declare himself superior to Timur based on a comparative analysis of their horoscopes; he also gloried in his own enlightened illiteracy, which, like Timur’s, was reminiscent of the prophetic model of Muhammad. His grandson Shahjahan, more sedately, adopted on his accession the royal title sahib‐qiran‐i sani, the Second Lord of Conjunction, with Timur being sahib‐qiran‐i avval, the First (Moin 2012: 23–4, 145). On the far side of Asia, boiling out of the ‘Wild West’ of Islamdom, the mighty Ottoman ghazi conquerors of the 16th century laid claim to Timurid‐style Starlordship with millenarian and occultist arguments equally trenchant. Where Mughal and Safavid imperial millenarianism was cyclical and reincarnationist in orientation, however, proposing the inauguration of a new religious‐historical dispensation by a king incarnating the eternal divine light, its Ottoman cognate was linear and teleological: the Ottoman Empire as world empire, the last in human history, expectant host of the mahdi and Jesus, sacral midwife of the eschaton. This profound theological‐cosmological difference reflects the burgeoning identity of the Ottoman state as New Byzantium (Rum), heir to the Christian and Jewish Early Modern Islamicate Empire: New Forms of Legitimacy 369 traditions of apocalypticism pervading the Mediterranean zone, an empire European and Asian in equal measure. The Jesus of Akbar and the Jesus of Suleyman are two very different beings. In their shared focus on Jesus, however, both sovereigns seem to have been reacting to the exclusivist Safavid claim to ‘Ali; and the scholarly architects of Ottoman imperial apocalypticism were steeped in the same Islamicate high occultist tradition that so profoundly shaped Timurid and inheritor imperial ideologies, and especially the sciences of astrology, lettrism, and geomancy (Melvin‐Koushki 2016; Şen 2017). Moreover, the conquest of Constantinople, finally accomplished by Mehmed the Conqueror (r. 1451–1481) after long centuries of stymied Islamic destiny, was itself a pregnant sign of the end of time foretold by the Prophet Muhammad himself. From that point onward Ottoman apocalyptic expectations began to grow and prophetic materials increasingly circulated, exploding in popularity after the astonishing conquests of Selim the Grim and reaching a crescendo during the first two decades of Suleyman the Magnificent’s long and transformative reign (Fleischer 2009: 241). The scholar‐occultists responsible for conceptualizing Ottoman imperial ideology during the Ottoman ‘golden age’ included in the first place the Antiochene ‘Abd al‐Rahman al‐Bistami (d. 1454), Ottoman cognate to Ibn Turka, the two having studied lettrism together in Mamluk Cairo (along with the above-mentioned revolutionary Shaykh Badr al‐Din). As with Ibn Turka’s lettrist writings for Iskandar Sultan and other Timurid elites, Bistami is responsible for a number of occultist works that became foundational to Ottoman ideology. His Miftah al‐jafr al‐jami‘ (“Key to the Comprehensive Prognosticon”) in particular stands as urtext for the Ottoman imperial apocalypticism of the first half of the 16th century (Fleischer 1992: 170; Fleischer 2018). The comprehensive prognosticon in question was that of Imam ‘Ali, who recorded on a piece of calfskin (jafr) all the major religiopolitical events that would occur until the end of time; this tradition of lettrist prognostication was then consolidated and promulgated by Imam Ja‘far al‐Sadiq, becoming the special province of sayyids, and then Sufi saints, down to the modern period. By the 15th century, jafr, now denoting letter divination as a discrete science, was considered throughout the Islamicate world to be one of the most reliable means of accessing walaya—specifically that of ‘Ali himself. Ottoman elite enthusiasm for this science of the imams well into the 16th century thus indicates the continued prevalence of Sunni imamophilia even in an age of hardening confessional boundaries, suggesting that the Shi‘i–Sunni binary produced by Safavid–Ottoman imperial rivalry was less all‐encompassing and more artificial than is usually assumed. Confessional differentiation did not mitigate the political need for walaya; it was rather the imperial competition for walaya that led to an exaggeration of confessional difference. The Ottoman elite’s obsession with eschatology, while firmly ‘Alid in tenor, was also heavily Danielic: apocalypses abounded, especially that attributed to Daniel, and the imperial patronage of geomancy, a prognosticative science especially associated with the Hebrew prophet, burgeoned to an unprecedented extent under 370 Early Modernity and Civilizational Apogee (ca. 1453–1683) Suleyman. Most notably, Haydar the Geomancer, erstwhile tutor to Shah Tahmasb, was for decades one of Suleyman’s closest advisors and an influential presence in the imperial capital. In his first annual geomantic prognostication for Suleyman in 1535, for instance, the Azerbaijani occultist asserts his patron to be both the sahib‐ qiran and the sahib‐zaman, a messianic Lord of the Age combining irresistible military and spiritual potency, as well as the qutb al‐aqtab or axis mundi, whose universal dominion must needs prompt the parousia of the mahdi and the second coming of Jesus (Fleischer 2009: 240). Other Ottoman ideologues quickly followed suit, waxing eloquent on the same themes. Mention has been made of Mevlana ‘Isa’s versified history, finished in 1543, which similarly combines Suleyman’s multiple eschatological identities; a few years earlier, one Sena’i likewise celebrated the sultan in his Suleymanname not simply as Lord of Conjunction, but indeed as the mahdi of the eschaton himself (mehdi‐yi ahır üz‐zaman; Fleischer 1992: 169). The pseudonymous 15th‐century (?) jafri text al‐Shajara al‐nu‘maniyya fi-l‐dawla al‐‘uthmaniyya (“The Crimson Tree: On Ottoman Glory”), significantly attributed to Ibn al‐‘Arabi, was likewise seized upon for its prediction of the Ottoman conquest of Egypt and its characterization of the House of Osman as the last world empire at the end of time (Fleischer 2009: 239). While the strictly messianic title akhir al‐zaman, signifying the Last World Emperor, had earlier been applied to Timur by Sharaf al‐Din Yazdi and to Iskandar Sultan by Mu‘in al‐Din Natanzi (fl. 1413; Binbaş 2016: 196, 257), and to Shah Tahmasb in turn by one of his court historians (Babayan 2002: 302), it became central to Suleyman’s ideological platform and served to sacralize his total transformation of Ottoman society. While Suleyman did not achieve world dominion or witness the end of history, of course, in a very real sense he does stand as a mahdi and his reign as an eschaton: the Suleymanic model was received as definitive and final for centuries thereafter, sinew and skeleton for the most successful, long‐lived empire in Islamic history. Only decline was possible after such perfection—or so it was assumed (Fleischer 1992). Unlike Shah Isma‘il, then, but like Emperor Akbar, Sultan Suleyman successfully routinized his own messianic charisma. But rather than create a new imperial religion or institute astrocratic ritual after the manner of Akbar, he rerouted the full force of his millenarian kingship into his status as Lawgiver. Through decades of ideological and political experimentation and innovation, he singlehandedly synthesized and hierarchically organized a host of conflicting intellectual and sociopolitical trends to produce a new, rationalized, and encompassing Ottoman imperial culture. Like Akbar, Suleyman created order from motley chaos. His crowning achievement, as his epithet denotes, was the codification and universalization of Ottoman dynastic law (yasaq, qanun), wholly Chingizid and Mamluk in origin—this precisely as assertion of his absolutist transcendence of Islamic law (shari‘a) itself in his role as millennial sovereign (Fleischer 2009: 159–60; Burak 2015). At the same time, after 1550 he increasingly distanced himself from the apocalyptic discourse that had fueled the first decades of his reign, embracing in its place an ostentatious Sunni rectitude. (This brand of imperial Sunnism was directly Early Modern Islamicate Empire: New Forms of Legitimacy 371 inherited from the Mamluk Sultanate, absorbed into the Ottoman Empire after conquest by Selim the Grim, and as such featured classic titles like Restorer of the Caliphate and Servitor of the Two Sanctuaries that were so crucial to otherwise tenuous Mamluk religiopolitical legitimacy.) For any sovereign less millennial, Suleyman’s twin identities as Chingizid Lawgiver and champion of Sunnism might seem to be incompatible, even mutually exclusive; yet his overarching identity as Last World Emperor required that he be Islamic by transcending Islam itself. Conclusion Writing at the turn of the 17th century, the Ottoman historian and bureaucrat Mustafa ‘Ali (1541–1600) weighed Suleymanic universalist imperial ideology against historical reality and found it wanting. Far from being the last world empire, the Ottoman Empire was but the political equal of the Safavid Empire of Iran, the Uzbek Empire of Central Asia, and the Mughal Empire of India—all of whose competing universalist platforms, millennial or otherwise, had similarly failed to achieve the promise of true world empire held out by their shared Chingizid‐Timurid model (Fleischer 1986: 273–92). The dream of Alexander remained elusive. But perhaps ‘Ali was too pessimistic in this judgment. Taken as a single cultural continuum (Dale 2009: 3; Matthee 2015), the empires of the early modern Turko‐ Mongol, Perso‐Islamic world did establish sovereignty over a third of the human race; did unite East and West politically, economically, and culturally; and did preside over the post‐Mongol era of globalization under a millenarian and radically ecumenical banner. Within the context of Islamic history, the greatest of their dynasts made good on the stymied ‘Abbasid claim to both physical and spiritual caliphate through startlingly innovative and experimental forms of messianic syncretism, creating new religions, new laws, and new societies in the process. Early modern Islamicate imperial ideologies were thus expressly supra‐Islamic, even post‐Islamic, in many key respects; yet they represent precisely the fulfillment of the millenarian universalism embodied by Islam itself, the exhaustive working out of walaya. Caliphs and countercaliphs of the so‐called classical period of Islam largely unsuccessfully sought the kind of religiopolitical transcendence that Muslim cosmocrators like Timur, Isma‘il, Akbar, and Suleyman actually achieved, thereby creating intensely cosmopolitan and expansive societies that dominated the Afro‐Eurasian ecumene for centuries and mediated cultural and economic exchange from China to Europe. With the European conquest of the Western hemisphere, the center of gravity of the world economy gradually began to shift away from the Indian Ocean‐ Mediterranean system and toward the Atlantic, to be sure, a trend that massively accelerated during the age of industrialization; but the blanket trope of ‘Islamic decline,’ still all too common in scholarship on the early modern period, is ludicrous in the face of the evidence. Such a bias persists due in large part to the 372 Early Modernity and Civilizational Apogee (ca. 1453–1683) long neglect of this period among historians of Islam, who have until recently focused primarily on the classical and modern periods; this has further reinforced the assumption that Islamic history, like the (very young) scholarly field that studies it, has an hourglass form. And even now that the Islamicate early modern period is enjoying a full rehabilitation among specialists, intellectual history and political history are still rarely treated as an interactive unit. But ideas and ideologies have material consequences: they possess the ability to reshape landscapes just as surely as military technologies or tax regimes, as plague or climate change. Standard categorical descriptors like “gunpowder empires,” “early modern,” or “patrimonial‐bureaucratic” (Dale 2009: 5–6), while more or less useful in certain respects, are thus insufficient. We must also account for the central role of such phenomena as millenarianism, messianism, apocalypticism, occultism, Sufism, and monism in shaping and driving early modern Islamicate imperialism, for it was precisely these cultural currents that helped to create—and that were created by—Islamicate civilization’s greatest era of flourishing. Despite the symbolically potent, syncretic, and flexible universalist religiopolitical ideologies they developed, none of the early modern Islamicate empires managed, in the end, to achieve the world domination they sought. Yet those same ideologies drove them to become in their heyday the most politically, culturally, and economically cosmopolitan and religiously complex societies of the early modern period. Globalization, that is, whatever its later (mis)adventures, was first birthed under the lunar signs of Fatima, Mary, and Alanqo’a, and the solar signs of Muhammad, ‘Ali, Jesus, Solomon, Timur, Chingiz, and Alexander. Note 1 Occultism here denotes a scholarly preoccupation with one or more of the occult sciences (al‐‘ulum al‐ghariba), including astrology, alchemy, and various forms of magic and divination. References Al‐Azmeh, Aziz. 2001. Muslim Kingship: Power and the Sacred in Muslim, Christian and Pagan Polities. London: I.B. Tauris. Amanat, Abbas. 1996. “The Nuqt ̣awı ̄ Movement of Maḥmūd Pisı k̄ hānı ̄ and His Persian Cycle of Mystical‐Materialism.” In Mediaeval Isma‘ili History and Thought, edited by Farhad Daftary, 281–97. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Anzali, Ata. 2017. “Mysticism” in Iran: The Safavid Roots of a Modern Concept. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Arjomand, Said Amir. 1988. “Introduction: Shi‘ism, Authority, and Political Culture.” In Authority and Political Culture in Shi‘ism, edited by Said Amir Arjomand, 1–22. Albany: State University of New York Press. Early Modern Islamicate Empire: New Forms of Legitimacy 373 Aubin, Jean. 1957. “Le mécénat timouride à Chiraz.” Studia Islamica, 8: 71–88. Babayan, Kathryn. 2002. Mystics, Monarchs, and Messiahs: Cultural Landscapes of Early Modern Iran. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Balivet, Michel. 1995. Islam mystique et révolution armée dans les Balkans Ottomans: vie du Cheikh Bedreddîn, le “Hallâj des Turcs” (1358/59–1416). Istanbul: Isis. Bashir, Shahzad. 2005. Fazlallah Astarabadi and the Hurufis. Oxford: Oneworld. Binbaş, I.̇ Evrim. 2014. “Timurid Experimentation with Eschatological Absolutism: Mı ̄rzā Iskandar, Shāh Ni‘matullāh Walı ,̄ and Sayyid Sharı f̄ Jurjānı ̄ in 815/1412.” In Unity in Diversity: Mysticism, Messianism and the Construction of Religious Authority in Islam, edited by Orkhan Mir‐Kasimov, 277–303. Leiden: Brill. Binbaş, I.̇ Evrim. 2016. Intellectual Networks in Timurid Iran: Sharaf al‐Dı̄n ‘Alı̄ Yazdı̄ and the Islamicate Republic of Letters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brack, Jonathan Z. 2016. Mediating Sacred Kingship: Conversion and Sovereignty in Mongol Iran. PhD thesis, University of Michigan. Bulliet, Richard. 2013. “Religion and the State in Islam: From Medieval Caliphate to the Muslim Brotherhood.” Occasional Paper Series, Center for Middle East Studies, University of Denver, 2. Burak, Guy. 2015. “Between the Ḳan̄ ū n of Qāytbāy and the Ottoman Yasaq: A Note on the Ottomans’ Dynastic Law.” Journal of Islamic Studies, 26: 1–23. Caiozzo, Anna. 2005. “The Horoscope of Iskandar Sultān as a Cosmological Vision in the Islamic World.” In Horoscopes and Public Spheres: Essays on the History of Astrology, edited by Günther Oestmann, H. Darrel Rutkin, and Kocku von Stuckrad, 115–44. Berlin: de Gruyter. Casale, Giancarlo. 2010. The Ottoman Age of Exploration. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Casale, Giancarlo. 2015. “The Islamic Empires of the Early Modern World.” In The Cambridge World History, VI: The Construction of a Global World, 1400–1800 CE, Part 1: Foundations, edited by Jerry H. Bentley, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, and Merry E. Wiesner‐ Hanks, 323–46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chann, Naindeep S. 2009. “Lord of the Auspicious Conjunction: Origins of the Ṣah̄ ̣ ib‐ Qirān.” Iran and the Caucasus, 13: 93–110. Dale, Stephen Frederick. 2009. The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dihdar Shirazi, Muhammad. 1996. Rasa’il‐i Dihdar, edited by Muhammad Husayn Akbari Sawi. Tehran: Nuqta. ̇ Fazlıoğlu, Ihsan. 2008. “The Samarqand Mathematical‐Astronomical School: A Basis for Ottoman Philosophy and Science.” Journal for the History of Arabic Science, 14: 3–68. Felek, Özgen. 2017. “Fears, Hopes, and Dreams: The Talismanic Shirts of Murād III.” Arabica, 64: 647‒72. Fowden, Garth. 2014. Before and after Muḥ ammad: The First Millennium Refocused. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Fleischer, Cornell H. 1986. Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: The Historian Mustafa Âli (1541–1600). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Fleischer, Cornell H. 1992. “Lawgiver as Messiah: The Making of the Imperial Image in the Reign of Süleymân.” In Soliman le magnifique et son temps, edited by Gilles Veinstein, 159–77. Paris: École du Louvre. Fleischer, Cornell H. 2009. “Ancient Wisdom and New Sciences: Prophecies at the Ottoman Court in the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries.” In Falnama: The Book of Omens, edited by M. Farhad and S. Bagci, 232–43, 329–30. London: Thames & Hudson. 374 Early Modernity and Civilizational Apogee (ca. 1453–1683) Fleischer, Cornell H. 2018. “From al‐Bistami (d. 1454) in Bursa to Postel (d. 1581) in Paris: The Trajectory of Apocalyptic in the Early Modern Mediterranean.” Journal for the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 61. Gutas, Dimitri. 1998. Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco‐Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ‘Abbā sid Society (2nd–4th/8th–10th Centuries). London: Routledge. Iskandar Sultan. 2008. “Dibacha‐yi jami‘‐i sultani.” In Sharaf al-Din ‘Ali Yazdi Munsha’at, edited by Iraj Afshar, 207–11. Tehran: Surayya. Kaziruni, Abu ’l‐Qasim. 2007. Sullam al‐samavat, edited by ‘Abd Allah Nurani. Tehran: Mirath‐i maktub. Markiewicz, Christopher. 2015. The Crisis of Rule in Late Medieval Islam: A Study of Idrı̄s Bidlı̄sı̄ and Governance at the Turn of the Sixteenth Century. PhD thesis, University of Chicago. Matthee, Rudi. 2015. “The Decline of Safavid Iran in Comparative Perspective,” Journal of Persianate Studies, 8: 276–308. Melvin‐Koushki, Matthew. 2011. “The Delicate Art of Aggression: Uzun Hasan’s Fathnama to Qaytbay of 1469.” Iranian Studies, 44: 193–214. Melvin‐Koushki, Matthew. 2012a. “Tamerlane (1336–1405).” In Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought, edited by Gerhard Böwering. Patricia Crone, Wadad Kadi et al., 542–3. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Melvin‐Koushki, Matthew. 2012b. The Quest for a Universal Science: The Occult Philosophy of Ṣa’̄ in al‐Dı̄n Turka Iṣfahānı̄ (1369–1432) and Intellectual Millenarianism in Early Timurid Iran. PhD thesis, Yale University. Melvin‐Koushki, Matthew. 2016. “Astrology, Lettrism, Geomancy: The Occult‐Scientific Methods of Post‐Mongol Islamicate Imperialism.” Medieval History Journal, 19: 142–50. Melvin‐Koushki, Matthew. 2018. “The Occult Sciences in Safavid Iran and Safavid Occultists Abroad.” In The Safavid World, edited by Rudi Matthee. New York: Routledge. Melvin‐Koushki, Matthew, and James Pickett. 2016. “Mobilizing Magic: Occultism in Central Asia and the Continuity of High Persianate Culture under Russian Rule.” Studia Islamica, 111: 231–84. Mir‐Kasimov, Orkhan. 2014. “Conflicting Synergy of Patterns of Religious Authority in Islam.” In Unity in Diversity: Mysticism, Messianism and the Construction of Religious Authority in Islam, edited by Orkhan Mir‐Kasimov, 1–20. Leiden: Brill. Moin, A. Azfar. 2012. The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam. New York: Columbia University Press. Moin, A. Azfar. 2015. “Sovereign Violence: Temple Destruction in India and Shrine Desecration in Iran and Central Asia.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 57: 467–96. Morimoto, Kazuo. 2016. “An Enigmatic Genealogical Chart of the Timurids: A Testimony to the Dynasty’s Claim to Yasavi‐‘Alid Legitimacy?” Oriens, 44: 145–78. Parodi, Laura E. 2000. “‘The Distilled Essence of the Timurid Spirit’: Some Observations on the Taj Mahal.” East and West, 50: 535–42. Rizvi, Sajjad H. 2009. Mullā Ṣadrā and Metaphysics: Modulation of Being. London: Routledge. Şen, Ahmet Tunç. 2017. “Reading the Stars at the Ottoman Court: Bayezid II (r. 1481–1512) and His Celestial Interests.” Arabica, 64: 557‒608. Sheffield, Daniel. 2014. “The Lord of the Planetary Court: Cosmic Aspects of Millennial Sovereignty in the Thought of Ā ẕar Kayvān and His Associates.” Unpublished paper. Early Modern Islamicate Empire: New Forms of Legitimacy 375 Sood, Gagan. 2011. “Circulation and Exchange in Islamicate Eurasia: A Regional Approach to the Early Modern World.” Past and Present, 212: 113–62. Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. 1997. “Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia.” Modern Asian Studies, 31: 735–62. Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. 2000. “Un grand dérangement: Dreaming an Indo‐Persian Empire in South Asia, 1740–1800.” Journal of Early Modern History, 4: 337–78. Subtelny, Maria E. 2010. “Tamerlane and His Descendants: From Paladins to Patrons.” In The New Cambridge History of Islam, III: The Eastern Islamic World, Eleventh to Eighteenth Centuries, edited by David O. Morgan and Anthony Reid, 169–220. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Subtelny, Maria Eva, and Anas B. Khalidov. 1995. “The Curriculum of Islamic Higher Learning in Timurid Iran in the Light of the Sunni Revival under Shāh‐Rukh.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 115: 210–36. Truschke, Audrey. 2016a. Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court. New York: Columbia University Press. Truschke, Audrey. 2016b. “Translating the Solar Cosmology of Sacred Kingship.” Medieval History Journal, 19: 136–41. Woods, John E. 1999 [1976]. The Aqquyunlu: Clan, Confederation, Empire, revised ed. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Yücesoy, Hayrettin. 2009. Messianic Beliefs and Imperial Politics in Medieval Islam: The ‘Abbāsid Caliphate in the Early Ninth Century. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.